iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Jenny with a Green Ribbon Around Her Neck @readingtheend.bsky.social · 2h

this looks rad as fuck

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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Rebecca R Helm @rebeccarhelm.bsky.social · 15h

Magical creatures don’t exist, eh? Roughly 400 million years ago, before the birth of trees, there were giant mystery cones called “Prototaxites,” which grew nearly 30 feet tall. We literally have no idea what they were. Plant: no Mushroom: no Animal: no Tell me this isn’t a little bit magic

Sunset with giant mystery cones Prototaxites https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/prototaxites-fossil-explained-why-this-prehistoric-colossus-still-baffles-scientists-1773173

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Luke O'Neil @lukeoneil47.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The byline left up there like a head on a spike outside a castle

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Joey Esposito @joeyesposito.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

terminator reboot but it’s humans going back to 1999 to make sure Y2K happens so the internet dies forever

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Gretchen Felker-Martin PRE ORDER CHIMERA 2.16.27 🍉 @scumbelievable.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

These kids have real balls. I hope they gut Cornell.

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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

"Shklovsky repudiated the principle of artistic economy. He saw art as increasing the difficulty + span of perception "because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged"; he saw art as means of destroying automatism in perception." Eichenbaum

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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 27/09/2026

it's nice that american pop culture isn't necessarily a global megaphone any more. for example, we were once all forced to know what a kid rock was, but are I think mostly (and thankfully) unaware of this cia plant white power anthem or whatever it is

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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 26/09/2026

can science magazine feel shame? it does not act like it does

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Jared Pechaček @vandroidhelsing.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I can’t go to your thing. I have to attend to my agonies

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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 26/09/2026

Happy 43rd Stanislav Petrov day!

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Jamie McKelvie @mckelvie.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

It's very "funny" this is happening at the same time the AI companies got away with stealing everyone's books

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Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 25/09/2026

I guess that the best argument, for me, against AI is that everyone advocating it seems to be a psychopath.

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

yeah I very much think they are inventing robot wife-servants because they’re mad human women have better options than wife-servant now I think all the time about that guy who said male clients kept flirting with his automated scheduler because the software defaulted to a female name

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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 26/09/2026

wait, I knew those weren't the actual overall sales numbers (by comparing, eventually, with royalty statements) but … I actually thought they *were* the actual US NPD BookScan numbers? just limited in the usual BookScan ways (tracking only point-of-sale print sales at major retailers &c.)

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Classic SF with Andy Johnson @andyjohnson.xyz · 21/09/2026

Space elevators have shown up frequently in SF, but Arthur C. Clarke popularised them with his novel The Fountains of Paradise (1979). My new piece looks at this optimistic story of mega-engineering, set in a version of Sri Lanka.

andyjohnson.xyz

Down to the wire: The Fountains of Paradise (1979) by Arthur C. Clarke

A better future through mega-engineering

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Classic SF with Andy Johnson @andyjohnson.xyz · 24/09/2026

"Clarke was, in point of fact, not Sri Lankan, but he lived here in a state of such absolute colonial privilege that they made a new category of resident just for him." I found this 2022 piece by @vajra.me, which mentions The Fountains of Paradise, very interesting.

vajra.me

The Extractivism of Setting and the Traitor’s Text

On canon and place.

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Bart⚓️ @bartgonnissen.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The Facial Expressions of Tethys by artist Julius von Bismarck. A suspended high-sea buoy that moves in real time. Sensors on a twin buoy out in the Atlantic Ocean send live satellite data to motors inside the museum. This makes the indoor buoy copy the exact, real-time movements of the ocean waves.

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Solaris Books @solarisbooks.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

We're delighted to see that M. John Harrison's stunning literary speculative novel, THE END OF EVERYTHING, from our sister imprint @serpents-tail.bsky.social, has been shortlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize!!!!! 'A visionary and brilliant investigation of anxious times' CHINA MIÉVILLE

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Simon Spanton @simonguy.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I was lucky enough to be Mike's editor for a while and if there is a writer more in control of every nuance of their writing, more able to illustrate how we negotiate the surreal and bewildering tangle of how we live in the world then I want to read them. An amazing writer, an amazing career.

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Amanda Helms - Preorder THE UPPER TENTACLE @amandaghelms.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Hey, my book THE UPPER TENTACLE I've been talking about? Here's Union Square's press release announcing their new novella line Singularity, of which TUT is a part! ("high-impact, one-sitting fiction! That's me [too]!) www.hachettebookgroup.com/articles/uni...

hachettebookgroup.com

UNION SQUARE & CO. ANNOUNCES “SINGULARITY”: A BOLD NEW NOVELLA PROGRAM DEDICATED TO HIGH-IMPACT, ONE-SITTING FICTION

The curated line bypasses traditional page counts to champion narrative velocity across genres, kicking off September 2026 with titles from Harlan Ellison, Adam Cesare, and more. NEW YORK, NY (Augu…

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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 23/09/2026

lmao www.thedriftmag.com/turbo-charge...

When I encounter people who insist there is no escaping A.I. and they try to force me to discuss it, they often seem threatened by someone else’s personal refusal of the future to which they have, for some reason, dedicated themselves. Even as they mostly claim it will be dire, these same people also say we have to talk about A.I., use it, live in its world instead of our own. Jouissance always has some dirty part to it; turbo-charged nihilism isn’t mine. (My own death drive is 1.0.) People are at their worst, somehow, in a lot of these conversations. But meanwhile I have a question: if we use these new technologies to combine Jaron Lanier and Olga Tokarczuk into one wypipo dreadlocked Janus face, do they cancel each other out?

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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 23/09/2026

Bolnoys on both your domies! Ay, a skrikie, a skrikie. Go, malchick, fetch a surgeon! — Nadsat Mercutio, probably

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Roseanna Pendlebury @chloroformtea.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The goodreads reviews of The End of Everything are just phenomenal.

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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 22/09/2026

super intelligence was the only way to beat Abominus's brute force

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Audrey @shockandaudrey.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

There were also new stick insects, if we're still workshopping this

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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 22/09/2026

new cat, new mouse, new brain, what dread punchline is this setup for

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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 22/09/2026

In recent translations, a couple of my more climate-change-themed stories (“The Translator, At Low Tide” and “Half-Eaten Cities”) were translated into Tamil by @ezi.asokan.org and appeared in the London-based magazine காற்றுவெளி and the anthology கடலோடிகள் from Chennai-based press கருப்புப் பிரதிகள்.

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andré carrington @andrecarrington.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The novelino has mass but no charge, correct?

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Tarquin 'Howling Mad' Holmes @tarquinhh.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

It's still less than twenty years since we firmly identified the long theorised weak farce proson that carries bathos, in addition to the strong farce proson that carries pathos.

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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 21/09/2026

apart from the known standard model of novels, novellas, and novellettes, we are yet to find evidence of the hypothesized novelino, noveletto, noveluccio, noveluzzo, or noveluolo. a great deal of work remains to be done

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it's charloh! (it/its) @charloh.online · 21/09/2026

seems irresponsible to launch a new mouse right after new cat was released but we're no biologist

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Mongabay @mongabay.com · 17/09/2026

After 20 years of research, scientists have formally described Mus dumbara, a new spiny mouse species endemic to Sri Lanka’s Knuckles Mountain Range. First lured by burnt coconut in 2004, the elusive rodent highlights the island's overlooked small-mammal biodiversity. Story by Malaka Rodrigo.

mongabay.cc

How burnt coconut helped discover new to science endemic species in Sri Lanka

COLOMBO — As dusk settled over the paddy fields at Puwakpitiya, a village on the northern edge of Knuckles Mountain Range locally known as Dumbara mountains in Central Sri Lanka, researchers began…

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E. Catherine Tobler @ecatherine.com · 20/09/2026

Good morning

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Indrapramit Das @indrapramitdas.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Much gratitude to Usman for his kind words. He's a fantastic writer himself, one I've read as a fellow South Asian (our governments & ethnonationalists may hate each other, but the people of our countries are joined by history and culture) for a long time now. I'm so excited for his debut novel:

penguinrandomhouse.com

A Dark and Narrow House by Usman T. Malik: 9798217043910 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

"Some writers go a step past, into the darkness, but that step past is just a starting point for Usman T. Malik . . . Follow his voice. If you dare." —Stephen Graham Jones, bestselling author of...

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Indrapramit Das @indrapramitdas.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Tanya Tagaq's SPLIT TOOTH (unless it's widely beloved and I just haven't heard). Strange to say about a Booker-winning author, but Marlon James' incantatory fantasy BLACK LEOPARD, RED WOLF, tbh. Samit Basu's CHOSEN SPIRITS / THE CITY INSIDE. Ursula Whitcher's NORTH CONTINENT RIBBON.

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Sascha Stronach🏳️‍⚧️, The Sunforge out now @understatesmen.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

hey remember that shoe company that pivoted to AI

the 6 month stock price for shoe company Allbirds (now Smartbird), which very briefly shot up 700% after announcing it was becoming an AI company, and is now lower than it started

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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 20/09/2026

if "rogue artificial intelligence" were real, shutting it down would be easy and no different from shutting down any other dodgy industry (pull the plugs, seize the assets, prosecute the people, enforce harsh penalties) but it isn't, so the kill switch must logically also be fictional. I vote aliens

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Usman T. Malik @usmantm.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

it is a travesty that the brilliant Indrapramit Das is not more widely known in fantasy and horror fandom. The way Indra pulled South Asian history, politics, monstrosity, and queer love together in one book is a thing to behold

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Tom Ewing @tomewing.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Narnia books as Isekai Manga

1. My Sweet Tooth Made Me The Villainess’ Slave
2. In Another World, The Dwarves Picked Me To Lead The Revolution
3. All At Sea With My Level 0 Sailing Skills
4. On A Mission In Another World And I Can’t Remember The Cheat Codes
5. That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Horse
6. Help! My Uncle’s In Love With The Demon Queen!
7. Reincarnated In Another World Just As The Game’s Ending

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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 19/09/2026

“as of late January 2026, a small group of women allegedly were creating fictitious online dating profiles with the purpose of attracting and then doxxing law enforcement participating in immigration enforcement” some heroes are catfish

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Blaft Publications @blaft.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

What he said! If you're in India, pre-order here! www.blaft.com/collections/...

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cait (and adonis) @cait.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

NEW CAT JUST DROPPED!!!!!

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Wanly Made Mailman @basicchunnel.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Continuing my research to fire a text-shaped railgun slug at “False Light: Moral Worldbuilding and the Virtues of Evil”, I found that William “Billy Gas” Gass vs. John Gardner literary debate transcript I was looking for! (One more to follow, sry alt text doesn’t have capacity for transcrip)

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elia ayoub @ayoub.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Friend shared this video of a man unveiling the library he hid when he fled Damascus in 2011. It’s incredible

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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 16/09/2026

if you think ed sheeran is a spineless shitheel (as you should) and have been celebrating the bands who've quat his tour, you can join them in an act of equally principled and much more direct action right here and now, by signing up to support the Sameer Project

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Cynthia Gómez @cynthiasaysboo.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

And now I get to say that Muñeca won the Octavia E. Butler award! And I got to be there in person:) This is the first time I've won anything for my writing, and I'm so happy.

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