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Timothy S. Miller

@timothysmiller.bsky.social
498 followers 904 following 83 posts

fantasy, science fiction, medieval studies, plants he/him unicorn book: link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-… Earthsea book: link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-…

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Devin Garofalo @devingarofalo.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
It (nearly) lives! Forthcoming from OUP in November or December! My first reaction, for once, was glee — though the terror of writing a book is that it’s never finished. Eek! Woohoo! Wild to have proofs in hand!!!!
Title page of forthcoming book by me, titled Nineteenth-Century Poetry and Cosmologies of the Human: Worlds Unmanned. From Oxford UP.Table of contents for forthcoming book.

Introduction: Poetry, Person, Planet — with subsections on William Wordsworth; Sylvia Wynter and lyricization; climate, affectability, impress; and criticism, canonicity, and counterbumanism. 

First chapter on Wordsworth, Charles Lyell, and c19 manscapes — with subsections on Wordsworth’s and Lyell’s lyric theologies, the pathetic fallacy (Ruskin) and Wynter on desperate realization, and apostrophizing Toussaint Louverture. 

Second chapter on Tennyson’s In Memoriam, the possibilities and limits of posthumanism, and ambivalent reading — with subsections on extinction and apostrophe. 

Third chapter on Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the problem of reference, and infrastructures of reading — with subsections on Swedenborgianism, sphericity, plantation inheritances, and the slippages of rhyme. 

Fourth chapter on Phillis Wheatley, extractivism, extractionist reading, and salvage criticism—with subsections on solar intergumanism, allusion, reticence, and refusal. 

Coda on contemporary representations of climate collapse, Wynter on transumption, and the afterlives of c19 aesthetic imaginaries.
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 06/07/2026
New preprint! So honoured to have worked with Ishani Ray on providing vital critique on "AI literacy" & correctives for those interested in understanding why "just use the newest version of an LLM" is nonsense Contra Literacy-Laundering: Mechanistic Critical AI Literacy doi.org/10.5281/zeno... 1/
Critical discourse on large language models (LLMs) has bifurcated between epistemic dismissal that invokes some form of the stochastic parrot metaphor to puncture hype, and pragmatic accommodation that treats LLM capability improvements as grounds for updating the critique. We argue that both misdiagnose the problem as the issue is not whether or not LLMs work, but what kind of working is happening and at whose cost. Drawing on meta-theoretical frameworks of cognitive science, feminist labor analysis and critical pedagogy, we propose a conceptual reorientation. We develop this claim through registers of (i) the cognitive, examining what is forfeited when statistical pattern-matching substitutes for the iterative, grounded processes that constitute thinking; (ii) the pedagogical, examining how “AI literacy” as currently deployed is itself a symptom of the confusion it purports to address; and (iii) the political, examining how the infrastructure framing of AI naturalizes asymmetric labor displacement, particularly of feminized cognitive and reproductive work. The stochastic parrot, deployed with mechanistic precision rather than mere rhetorical convenience, specifies what is forfeited when cognitive labor is delegated, who bears the cost, and why a literacy adequate to this moment must begin from the epistemology of those most harmed by the systems it describes. We conclude with underlining that critical AI literacy, which this paper embodies an instance of, is the only sensible way forward.
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Science Fiction Foundation @sffoundation.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Worried you missed the deadline for our Clarke Award conference in December? Fear not - our partners at the University of Liverpool have extended the deadline to 17 August. call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/04/...
call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu
cfp | call for papers
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Gerry Canavan @gerrycanavan.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Upcoming publication! TEACHING SCIENCE FICTION from MLA Press. www.mla.org/Publications...
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Los Angeles Review of Books @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
"Why call this cozy mode of spec fic anything to do with 'weird' at all?" Megan Milks and Amber Dawn respond to the "New Qweird": lareviewofbooks.org/article/letter-…
lareviewofbooks.org
Letter to the Editor in Response to the ‘New Qweird’ | Los Angeles Review of Books
The editors of the anthology ‘New Queer Weird’ provide a critique of the other label, recently outlined by LARB contributors.
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A Damned Stemple @adamstemple.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
My mother, the inimitable Jane Yolen passed away this morning after a blessingly short fight with Alzheimer’s. She did not suffer, and went peacefully into the ether which, I am certain for her, will be filled with words of the most exquisite beauty and meaning.
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
@gelatinousstand.bsky.social
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
You come across the most interesting texts when you're researching monster plants: www.sharjahart.org/en/resources...
sharjahart.org
The fast-growing stinking escaped waste-loving wall-breaching self-cloning other-than-natural no-man’s tree | Sharjah Art Foundation
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Locus Magazine @locusmag.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
2026 International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts locusmag.com/feature...
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Advising that my graduate students avoid writing long discursive footnotes, and then going home and writing long, long discursive footnotes...
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Los Angeles Review of Books @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
"Swann’s fantasies spoke to the feminist, gay-rights, and environmental movements. His intense focus on 'civilization' processed the growing sense of cultural malaise." Sean Guynes on Thomas Burnett Swann: lareviewofbooks.org/article/thomas-…
lareviewofbooks.org
The Bittersweet Temporality of Love | Los Angeles Review of Books
On the 50th anniversary of his death, it’s a perfect time to unearth the forgotten fantasies of Thomas Burnett Swann.
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Nicola Griffith SHE IS HERE out now! @nicolaz.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
This novel is the sum and summit of who Vonda was and what her work was about: all of us, imperfect, and doing our best. It’s an alt-history that feels like the beginning of the world. A world we could still have, if we’re lucky.
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 29/03/2026
@mariadahvana.bsky.social I just published an essay co-authored with one of my students, Teddy Valentine, on your Beowulf, titled "'War-wedded to a woe-bringer': Gender Performance and Queer Sexuality in Maria Dahvana Headley’s Translation of Beowulf": boydellandbrewer.com/book/studies...
boydellandbrewer.com
Studies in Medievalism XXXV
Essays exploring the intersections of politics and theory through medievalism in film, literature, gaming, and political movements.
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Gerry Canavan @gerrycanavan.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
In the mail today: my editors' copies of Dan Hassler-Forest's FAST AND FURIOUS FRANCHISING! www.amazon.com/Fast-Furious...
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
Beginning to see the word "aura" an awful lot in student writing this semester...
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Nicola Griffith SHE IS HERE out now! @nicolaz.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
How did I miss this?! "Mother-Quest: Maternal Remembrance and the Holy Grail in Chrétien de Troyes and Nicola Griffith," Brian J. Sheerin (ARTHURIANA 35,2): "...several key priorities of Chrétien are recovered by this modern retelling..." How cool! #medievalsky muse.jhu.edu/article/965242
Phto of screenshot of text: Mother-Quest:
Maternal Remembrance and the Holy Grail in Chrétien de Troyes and Nicola Griffith
Brian J. Sheerin - (bio)
This analysis of Chrétien's Conte du
Graal argues that Perceval's
experiences with and quest for the grail are significantly connected to the memory of his mother. An examination of Nicola Griffith's modern Perceval
narrative Spear then posits that several of the maternal priorities in Chrétien's narrative are recovered by this retelling.Screenshot of text: While Griffith's reimagining of Arthurian mythology has been justly lauded for its queering of traditional narratives that prioritize male (also white, heteronormative) heroism,? my interest in Spear lies rather in the way this text helps to recover overlooked themes and desires already latent in medieval storytelling.
This recuperative intersectionality, I wish to posit, is particularly compelling as it pertains to Chrétien's Conte du Graal, the original surviving elaboration of the Perceval storyline. Screenshot of text: Griffith draws heavily on Chrétien's model for her version of the tale, but rather than simply adjusting it to fit modern sensibilities, I hope to show that in many ways her narrative actually draws out priorities in Chrétien that have tended to be overlooked. These priorities are especially concentrated around Perceval's mother, a seemingly minor and even regressive figure in the original narrative who nevertheless refuses to remain forgotten after her official disappearance in the opening pages of the text.
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
@gelatinousstand.bsky.social
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Kelly McCullough @kellydmcc.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
I continue to be fascinated by the phenomenon whereby an expert engages with any of the LLMs on their field of expertise and is instantly horrified by the wrong answers, and then goes on to use it for things they are not experts in as though it won’t be just as bad for those.
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Nicola Griffith SHE IS HERE out now! @nicolaz.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
So, wow, nearly 13 years after publication HILD is finally reviewed in @nytimes.com. Thank you, Sadie Stein! (It seems to be one of those days 🤩)
Image of a battered and well-read novel, Hild by Nicola Griffith, on a carpetText screenshot: 
“Hild," by Nicola Griffith
Fiction, 2013
A colleague lent this to me and I'm so glad she did. First because I'm no medievalist, so a book set in this period allows me to dial down my weird, self-imposed vigilance for anachronism. But mostly because Griffith's novel about the young life of Saint Hilda of Whitby is so deft and moving, the best of what historical fiction can be. When we meet the future saint, Hild is merely a young Anglo-Saxon woman living in seventh-century Britain - albeit one with a power of sight that's a source of both respect and fear for those around her.
Pleasurable though this is, it is not "light" reading. Griffith is world-building (or at least world-reconstructing), and the time you spend to understand the alliances and pressures, the evolution of the church and the complexities of power is all necessary to the full immersion that is the book's greatest gift.
Yes, the publisher provides a handy glossary for the unfamiliar terminology, but you quickly find yourself confident enough in the author's powers that you assume she knows what she's doing.
Read if you like: "The Name of the Rose,
," by Umberto Eco;
"Pillars of the Earth," by Ken Follett; "Redwall," by Brian Jacques.
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
Newly released: the latest critical companion in our series "Palgrave Science Fiction and Fantasy: A New Canon," this time Graham J. Murphy on Marvel's Squadron Supreme: link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
link.springer.com
Marvel's Squadron Supreme
This book closely reads Mark Gruenwald's Squadron Supreme for its complicated, but ultimately productive engagement with the social dreaming of utopianism.
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
Why are we restructuring the entire world around this technology, again?
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
I missed that the latest book in the series of critical companions I edit for Palgrave has already reached print, Joseph Rex Young on George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones: link.springer.com/book/10.1007... . Feel free to pitch us on a potential project if you'd like to write one of your own!
link.springer.com
George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones
This book offers insightful analysis of A Game of Thrones, enhancing your understanding of its narrative tension and worldbuilding techniques.
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
I'm really thrilled to share an article that I co-wrote with one of my students, Arwen Paredes: "The First Queer Unicorn?: Reading Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn as Trans Narrative." www.mdpi.com/2410-9789/6/...
mdpi.com
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D. Harlan Wilson @dharlanwilson.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
EXTRAPOLATION seeks a reviewer for Mayurika Chakravorty’s FANTASY AND THE POLITICS OF SUBVERSION: SPECULATIVE WRITING IN COLONIAL INDIA. Please send queries to david.wilson@wright.edu. www.bloomsbury.com/us/fantasy-a... @bloomsburyacad.bsky.social (2026)
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sean guynes @guynes.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
A bio of Charles R. Saunders, an important but sadly too often forgotten Black writer of sword and sorcery fantasy (which he called sword and soul), early critic of racism in fantasy, and journalist is coming out in January. The author, Jon Tattrie, will be on @mealofthorns.bsky.social, too!
blackgate.com
The Bio of a Fantasy Giant: To Leave a Warrior Behind: The Life and Stories of Charles R. Saunders, the Man Who Rewrote Fantasy, by Jon Tattrie – Black Gate
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
So delighted to learn that my middle schooler's English teacher has started using ChatGPT to grade writing assignments. She received a near failing grade based in part on a diagnosis of specific grammatical errors that were not in fact in the assignment.
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
Here's a new one from graduate school recommendation systems: rating the "Clarity of career goals" of the applicant, and on a percentile basis. How do you distinguish applicants of the top 2% versus top 5% career goal clarity?
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Dr Rebecca Williams @augustaquarius.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
New issue of Science Fiction Film and Television ⬇️⬇️⬇️ liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/toc/sfftv/18/3
liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk
Contents | Science Fiction Film & Television 18, 3
In her book The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games (2019), Ebony Elizabeth Thomas explains that privileging marginalized characters in her examination of the fantastic illustrates how “race and the imagination ...
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Science Fiction Foundation @sffoundation.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
Quick reminder that, not only is Christmas around the corner, the deadline for this year's Peter Nicholls Essay Prize is only six weeks away - 11 January. call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/06/...
call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu
cfp | call for papers
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
Surreal experience: a quarter century or so after I'd always be asking my parents to buy me more Magic: The Gathering cards all the time, here I am saying "No, I'm not buying you more Magic: The Gathering cards" to my own twelve-year-old...
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
Somehow back down in the unicorn hole once again
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Science Fiction Foundation @sffoundation.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
Proud to be sponsoring this event next summer.
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
I have no idea what governs the price changes for my books even though I now co-edit the series they're published in, but for whatever reason the Beagle book is sitting at a much more affordable price at the moment: link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
link.springer.com
Peter S. Beagle's “The Last Unicorn”
This book assesses the work of one of the foundational figures of American fantasy, Peter S. Beagle through its focused analysis of The Last Unicorn.
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
Very disturbing to see that Grammarly itself now offers an "AI Humanizer" as one of its core services. Our university provides Grammarly subscriptions to students...
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
"Anyone with perfect posture was faking it, overcompensating for entrenched trauma."
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
Did kids these days still know about CliffsNotes? When I say "It's like the Cliffsnotes version of X," should I be saying something like "It's like the AI summary version of X"?
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
This is such a huge problem: I'm googling a quotation to find a page number, and the AI overview confidently produces total nonsense that would mislead students and others. (This is of course a quotation from noted Jung distiller China Miéville speaking to the subject of "Marxism and Fantasy.")
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
It was possibly a mistake to assign the entire Tales of Nevèrÿon, because now I just want to spend the entire semester talking about the series.
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 22/08/2025
What is going on in the world?
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 08/06/2025
I would give a copy of this book to everyone in my neighborhood but I think they already hate us enough: www.bloomsbury.com/us/lawn-9798...
bloomsbury.com
Lawn
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.A quintessential feature in Western gardens and landsc…
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Gerry Canavan @gerrycanavan.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
A new experience: an undergraduate sending me a request for an article I never wrote based off a fake AI citation.
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James Paz @jamespaz.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
Beautiful new medieval-themed issue of our UoM undergrad English Literature journal, with a foreword by me (doing my best to explain why medieval literature is worth studying): www.polyphonyjournal.com
polyphonyjournal.com
Home | Polyphony
Polypghony
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Dan Hassler-Forest @danhf.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
After the brutal reality of dealing with student papers in the ChatGPT era finally hit me, here are a few tactics that I've found at least somewhat effective in getting students to do their own writing: 🧵
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Classes are done: we're closing so many browser tabs today.
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Dennis Wise @denniswise.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
The latest issue of EXTRAPOLATION has a bunch of great reviews, including my review of Matthew Sanger's AN INTRODUCTION TO FANTASY. Check it out (or, if you don't have access, DM me for a copy!). www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/...
liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk
Reviews of Books | Extrapolation
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 26/04/2025
Can it be true that the audiobook of @alexpheby.bsky.social 's Mordew doesn't include the glossary? Unconscionable! I almost want to write a journal article on the glossary by itself.
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Anna McFarlane @mariettarosetta.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
Thanks to our contributors @grmorgan.bsky.social @timothysmiller.bsky.social @dretaylorpirie.bsky.social @nomad93.bsky.social @larsschmeink.bsky.social and many others. You can see the full table of contents here: edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-edi...
edinburghuniversitypress.com
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Ursula K. Le Guin @ursulakleguin.com · 17/03/2025
You have two weeks left to nominate books for the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction! Nominations close March 31st. Which books will join those shortlisted the last three years? (Yes, we fit them all in this picture.) www.ursulakleguin.com/prize-nomina...
28 books are arranged around a handwritten page that says "Nominations open!" The books are: Spear by Nicola Griffith; Wolfish by Christiane M. Andrews; Mammoths at the Gates by Nghi Vo; The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber; How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu; The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente; Sift by Alissa Hattman; The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera; The Employees by Olga Ravn; Drinking from Graveyard Wells by Yvette Lisa Ndlovu; The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher; A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger; After the Dragons by Cynthia Zhang; The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez; Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah Johnson; Aboreality by Rebecca Campbell; The Library of Broken Worlds by Alaya Dawn Johnson; Appleseed by Matt Bell; The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed; It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over by Anne de Marcken; Geometries of Belonging by R.B. Lemberg; Summer in the City of Roses by Michelle Ruiz Keil; Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky; Orbital by Samantha Harvey; Ten Planets by Yuri Herrera; Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh; Brother Alive by Zain Khalid; and Meet Us By the Roaring See by Akil Kumarasamy.
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
"...it was less that they were two separate people and more that they were a single person with two different ways of being in the world, each of which both knew."
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Timothy S. Miller @timothysmiller.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
As a consequence of my desire to avoid doomscrolling lately, I feel I've only really been using this site when I'm self-promoting. So, to counter that trend, here is an out-of-context passage from a novel, which is how I used to post in the good old days of social media...
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