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Will Wiles

@willwiles.bsky.social
2K followers 902 following 2.8K posts

Author of several novels. "The Dead Man's Empire" is out now (Angry Robot). And so is the short story collection "The Anechoic Chamber & other weird tales" (Salt). Writes about architecture for @apollo-magazine.com. He/him.

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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 17h
Bought myself a nice turtleneck jumper for half price in Uniqlo and, sadly, the resemblance is uncanny
Vic Reeves (right) and Bob Mortimer depicting Mulligan and O'Hare, a pair of folk singers wearing turtleneck sweaters. Reeves's nipples are clearly visible.
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
"See, my wife, she's always telling me I should write novels with 'explicitly masculine' themes, I can never tell what she means by that..."
Peter Falk portraying television detective Columbo
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Edward Woodward at the end of Wicker Man being confronted by (2nd image) a two-prong Europlug
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Photo of the cockatoo soft toy that sits by my desk (a gift from my agent when "Plume" was published)
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Reject AI RETVRN to green bubble wrap
A deliciously shonky body horror visual effect in "The Ark in Space" (1975)
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Allusions to turn-of-the-century American literature have no place in the Alien/Predator franchise, Adam
The USCSS "Nostromo" as it appears (with cargo) in the film "Alien"
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
(WG Sebald influence intensifies)
Screenshot of the prompt saying "this post was marked as being written in German" under Kirkdale's post.
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Selfie
A view across a gap between buildings, looking onto a wall of large windows, in which my tiny reflection can be seen
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
The Gimli and Legolas "I never thought I'd find myself fighting alongside an elf" meme from Lord of the Rings, but Legolas is wearing Embankment Place as a hat. Because it too has pointy ears.
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
More art criticism over on Instagram
Screenshot of an Instagram story showing detail of Whistler's painting of Southampton Water, with comment by me saying: "Whistler, putting in this tiny single light and its reflection: "ooh yeah baby, that's the stuff, now we're cooking"."
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Went to see Whistler at Tate Britain, which is marvellous. "Completeness is a reason for ceasing to exist."
Whistler's painting "Nocturne: Blue and Gold", of St Mark's Square, Venice
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Still from the sitcom "Community". Dean Pelton holds up the design for the school flag, which resembles an anus. The slogan around the logo reads "E pluribus anus".
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Hubba hubba
A somewhat Rubenesque pear on my kitchen table
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Selfie
A phone photo of the shadow of the Jubilee bridge cast on the muddy waters of the Thames at high tide. A solitary person can be seen in the shadow: it's me, taking the photo
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
None of these are a patch on "Bologna Regis"
Not very funny draft posts
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
"We find it impossible to imagine collective brilliance" unless you've visited any medieval cathedral
York Minster
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Just kicking back reading The Independent newspaper on my phone
Screenshot of a meaningless logjam of ugly ads, video links and clutter, with no actual article visible
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
I have the first of those but not the full set! I just adore trilogy covers that form a triptych or show the same scene over time. However I do have a soft spot for the entirely un-illustrative science photo library covers of my full set.
Panther paperbacks of the Foundation trilogy, illustrated with surreal, context-less science photography
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Terrific film, Flash Gordon. I must have watched it a dozen times before the age of twenty. Good job it didn't have any effect on me.
Mariangela Melato as General Kala in "Flash Gordon", looking mean in a amazing uniform and helmet of black and gold.
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Name your (second) favourite Disney princess. Wrong answers only. Yes another one, this is fun.
Ornella Muti as Princess Aura in "Flash Gordon" (1980), pictured with Max von Sydow playing Ming the Merciless
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Name your favourite Disney princess. Wrong answers only
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
The same hand meticulously corrected lots of errors throughout. They weren't wrong, the editing left a lot to be desired.
Handwritten annotation on first page of book, reading "a quite well written but very stupidly edited book"
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Truly awe inspiring to see one of nature's great migrations. (Also eclipse)
More hundreds of lime bikes piled up post eclipse
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
If you need a lime bike, they're all at the top of Primrose Hill
Photo of immense pile of lime bikes and other dockless hire bikes near the entrance to Primrose Hill.
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Happy World Lion Day! For secret reasons I've been looking at lion paintings for ages. Please enjoy the many leonine moods in "Daniel in the Lions' Den" by Briton Rivière, 1872.
Daniel, in a simple black robe and with his hands tied behind his back, stands humbly in front of a pride of seven lions in a stone cell. The lions all have different expressions - some are ferocious, others cowering. But none of them appear willing to attack.
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
From first place in 2009 to 22nd place in 2026, and now guaranteed to go lower. For shame.
Map showing the ILGA rankings of European countries for LGBT rights. While most of Western Europe and Scandinavia is green, the UK is a shameful orange.
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Remember, we must separate the art from the artist
Two large bins, one for general waste, the other for paper recycling
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
How I think my working day is going to feel, vs how it actually feels
St Jerome in his Study, painted by Antonello da Messina. A perfect picture of academic serenity in idealised architectural surroundings. Jerome sits calmly attentive, straight-backed, reading. Saint Jerome painted by Pieter Coecke van Aelst from the quoted post. Jerome is slumped, one hand supporting his head, the other with a finger on a tumbled skull. He looks flustered and miserable and his desk is untidy.
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Greetings from Sicily! (I mean, the Isle of Wight)
View from terrace of Osborne House across parched formal gardens with a bright blue sea visible in the distance
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Posting this before someone else does, IYKYK. (repost with alt text)
Jonathan Meades's "Bennometer", measuring the white heat of technology
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Tracy Jordan in "30 Rock" saying: "I finally understand the ending of 'The Sixth Sense'. Those names are the people who worked on the movie."
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Checking in on how people are enjoying my fantasy novel titled "Do Not Eat Elfcap"
Anonymised screengrab of 4-star Goodreads review that reads, in its entirety, "I would eat elfcap"
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Screenshot of part of AI author scam email. It reads: "I recently discovered The Dead Man's Empire, and what stayed with me most was its exploration of Bureaucratic satire, post-mortem spatial management, and the dark architecture of corporate governance., particularly Investigating how the dry, structural layout of administrative record-keeping can be subverted to manage a expanding empire of the deceased."Russell Dalrymple in Seinfeld saying "Not even close"
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
We must reject such imagined communities and embrace the true geography of this island
A map of ITV regions
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Back in the late 2000s when bloggers ruled the earth the usual way of threading this needle was to get wistful about expressionism
Fritz Hoger's Chilehaus in Hamburg, a massive office building in dark brick with green copper roof, which culminates in an acute angle like the prow of a ship
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
I'll take it
I am Pope Leo XIV, according to this dumb quiz
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Filling out a paper tax return? Section 21 eviction?
Headline from the Independent: "Gary Numan says way he attracted his wife might be illegal now". I didn't read the article.
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
Why won't Instagram links show the picture? Am I doing something wrong? Sigh. Anyway here's a nice picture of the book on some hard concrete
A pile of Ray Newman books on my back step.
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Poster for George C Scott's "Day of the Dolphin"
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
My sincere apologies to The Onion, Stan Kelly and anyone who thought of this before I did
Stan Kelly's iconic "Sickos" drawing of a man leering through a window, perversely enjoying what he's seeing, with the same image reflected beneath him and tinted algae green
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Thank you! Isn't it! She later wore that dress on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square as part of Antony Gormley's "One and Other" installation.
Hazel on the Fourth Plinth
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
20 years ago today
Hazel and I, newly wed, walking down a street in Marylebone
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
I do like it when this sort of thing happens
A nice Bluesky feed congruence between visually similar pictures of a Gemini space capsule and "Noseybonk", a terrifying character from 1980s kids' TV
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
(The painter JC Hook, not the crocophobic sea captain)
From "The Inner Life of the Royal Academy" by GD Leslie (1914): "Hook was very fond of babies. I remember his saying once that a house was not worth going into that had not got a baby and a barrel of beer on tap in it."
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
I am a minor later disciple of the true prophet
A portrait painting of the author JG Ballard, by Brigid Marlin
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
In hoc signo vinces
A flag that resembles a hot dog, with two pale brown horizontal outer bands representing the bun, and a sausage-coloured middle band. A thin wavy yellow band down the middle represents mustard. I saved it to my desktop from Bsky or Tumblr some months ago and made no note of the the artist, I'm sorry about that.
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
"This is one of the most satisfying, well crafted secondary world fantasy series out there, perfect for fans of Adrian Tchaikovsky's Tyrant Philosophers or Alex Pheby's Cities of the Weft" - thank you @abigailnussbaum.bsky.social for such a kind review of "The Dead Man's Empire" in April's Locus!
Thumbnail image of the cover of the April 2026 edition of American SFF magazine Locus.
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Will Wiles @willwiles.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
The odious Streeting reminds me of the disturbing way Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell used to draw Cecil Parkinson
Steve Bell's version of Cecil Parkinson, a sort of varnished and vain figure in a pinstripe suit, overstuffed like a Chesterfield sofa,with staring eyes, exuding beams of alleged "charisma" like the ark of the covenant
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