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Monica Byrne

@monicabyrne13.bsky.social

5.2K followers 780 following 5.8K posts

Writer living in Ireland. AI-free. Buy THE ACTUAL STAR: https://www.monicabyrne.org/the-actual-star. Reps at CAA, DG&B, and Kaplan/Perrone. She/her. monicabyrne.substack.com patreon.com/monicabyrne

www.monicabyrne.org

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · Oct 23

"When a book is this ambitious, either it is a thumping success or it falls on its face. Happily, The Actual Star is a stone-cold masterpiece. It is one of the most moving novels I have read and surely a contender for major awards."

Welp. 😳

The Actual Star review: A masterpiece of imaginative world building

Monica Byrne's fantastic second novel follows three storylines in the past, present and future, all of which are linked by historical threads and religious ideas, says Michael Marshall

www.newscientist.com

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 2h

And if you'd like to read the story "Parasocial" itself, here it is, with gorgeous artwork by Rey Velasquez Sagcal:

Parasocial

A Future Tense Fiction story by Monica Byrne about what goes wrong when a celebrity decides to license his image to a hologram start-up.

issues.org

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 2h

Two weeks ago, the option expired on my scifi story, "Parasocial." It's about a washed-up celebrity who sells the rights to his image for high-end intimate holography. Consequences ensue. I'm perversely proud of it.

What does it mean for a film option to expire, and what's next? I explain here:

Two roads diverged in a Holly-wood.... | Monica Byrne

Get more from Monica Byrne on Patreon

www.patreon.com

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 3h

The Actual Star is only $3.99 on ebook right now. Go buy it bruhs and brahs.

The Actual Star: A Novel

Amazon.com: The Actual Star: A Novel eBook : Byrne, Monica: Kindle Store

www.amazon.com

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 3h

Oh shit. I'm very sorry. Deleting now.

Reposted by Monica Byrne

Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 9d

Yep. From a talk I gave in 2018:

control and “kill us all.” I realized that that scenario is just something I have never been afraid of. And at the same moment, I noticed that the people who are terrified of machine super-intelligence are almost exclusively white men. I don’t think anxiety about AI is really about AI at all. I think it’s certain white men’s displaced anxiety upon realizing that women and people of color have, and have always had, sentience, and are beginning to act on it on scales that they’re unprepared for. There’s a reason that AI is almost exclusively gendered as female, in fiction and in life. There’s a reason they’re almost exclusively in service positions, in fiction and in life. I’m not worried about how we’re going to treat AI some distant day, I’m worried about how we treat other humans, now, today, all over the world, far worse than anything that’s depicted in AI movies. It matters that still, the vast majority of science fiction narratives that appear in popular culture are imagined by, written by, directed by, and funded by white men who interpret the crumbling of their world as the crumbling of the world.

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 5h

"They are cultists, and they worship themselves. They want to create 'transhuman' versions of themselves that live eternally. They view humanity on a hierarchical scale: they are indeed eugenicists."

PanoptiCon Artists: Your Questions Answered

On digital surveillance, ICE city raids, the need for new parties, and more.

sarahkendzior.substack.com

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 5h

"How does one boycott and strike in a country where the government *wants* the economy to collapse? That is the question folks need to answer."

Yup, this. More required reading from @sarahkendzior.bsky.social:

PanoptiCon Artists: Your Questions Answered

On digital surveillance, ICE city raids, the need for new parties, and more.

sarahkendzior.substack.com

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 6h

We should have a People's Peace Prize. Only half-joking.

The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 21h

“I’m worried about my community… I’m out here in a frog costume to show how ridiculous the notion that we’re violent terrorists is, and showcase how that narrative is wrong…”

Serious Q: is it too late to give this dude the Nobel Peace Prize? 🐸 🏆

Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 8h

Also just: can we ask why “a rat running across a desk” of one of the only global news networks to tell the truth about Palestine was generated in the first place? And is going viral? Christ, people.

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 8h

If you don’t delete an AI video after multiple people have pointed out to you that it is, honestly, fuck you. You are spreading misinformation at best, and at worst, contributing to the deterioration of our shared reality.

A video post from journalist Olga Nesterova saying “a rat ran across the table at Al Jazeera during a broadcast” with a rat emoji and a grimace emoji, which is still up, even though many people have pointed out it’s an AI-generated video

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 8h

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 21h

I’m always a little turned on when the first two rows in Wordle turn out to be gray, like ooh you elusive minx

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Monica Byrne @monicabyrne13.bsky.social · 21h

Tonight’s movie: ELIO. I very much enjoyed the tardigrade friend.

An animated Pixar image where a little boy in a cape and a large tardigrade try to master a secret handshake.

Reposted by Monica Byrne

Sheryl Weikal and the colorful Parrotlegals @leftistlawyer.com · 22d

Folks, you can't report the United States to its manager. There's no superhero coming to save us.

We don't need one giant act of heroism. We need millions of small acts of solidarity. Help one person in your community for nothing in return. Then, do it again. And again.

That's the revolution.