Jon Olfert 🌾🍁
@jonolfert.bsky.social
Stories in Analog, On Spec, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. History's eighth or ninth most prolific writer of speculative paleofiction. Polling and policy by day. If we pull this off, we'll eat like kings. http://jonathan-olfert.carrd.co
Hear me out: The Big Short but for the last few years of international student policy in Canada. Gosling as some Ontario college recruiter. Bourdain and Robbie explaining competing types of NPRs, PGWPs, and the Cape Breton rental market. Busey as Tibbets, Tim Blake Nelson as Miller. Can't go wrong.
January 23, 2026 at 12:03 AM
Hear me out: The Big Short but for the last few years of international student policy in Canada. Gosling as some Ontario college recruiter. Bourdain and Robbie explaining competing types of NPRs, PGWPs, and the Cape Breton rental market. Busey as Tibbets, Tim Blake Nelson as Miller. Can't go wrong.
Imagine this with weird deep-time horror, Neolithic villages, delicious sheep, blood and thunder, and this is the kind of landscape I had in mind when I wrote 'Under White Air.'
So help me, I will make you people love my homeland.
So help me, I will make you people love my homeland.
January 22, 2026 at 2:53 AM
Imagine this with weird deep-time horror, Neolithic villages, delicious sheep, blood and thunder, and this is the kind of landscape I had in mind when I wrote 'Under White Air.'
So help me, I will make you people love my homeland.
So help me, I will make you people love my homeland.
Contract signed — my weird Ice Age novelette 'Under White Air,' my 17th pro-rate story, has found a home at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
It's the return of Twistfinger, my Neolithic raider and magic-scavenger from 'A Forcible Calm.' Welcome back to the Wide Antlers, inspired by Alberta's Kananaskis:
It's the return of Twistfinger, my Neolithic raider and magic-scavenger from 'A Forcible Calm.' Welcome back to the Wide Antlers, inspired by Alberta's Kananaskis:
January 22, 2026 at 2:33 AM
Contract signed — my weird Ice Age novelette 'Under White Air,' my 17th pro-rate story, has found a home at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
It's the return of Twistfinger, my Neolithic raider and magic-scavenger from 'A Forcible Calm.' Welcome back to the Wide Antlers, inspired by Alberta's Kananaskis:
It's the return of Twistfinger, my Neolithic raider and magic-scavenger from 'A Forcible Calm.' Welcome back to the Wide Antlers, inspired by Alberta's Kananaskis:
Have taken out the trash, barefoot, in my boxer shorts, in colder weather than this within the last 24 hours. 🍁
Canadians you are not prepared for the temperature he tells you he is experiencing here.
January 22, 2026 at 2:23 AM
Have taken out the trash, barefoot, in my boxer shorts, in colder weather than this within the last 24 hours. 🍁
Introduce tinfoil hats to the narcissist in your life.
Sum: Narcissist gonna narcissist.
Study finds education level doesn’t stop narcissists from believing conspiracy theories www.psypost.org/study-finds-...
"...higher scores on measures of narcissism were linked to belief in conspiracy theories and misinformation."
Study finds education level doesn’t stop narcissists from believing conspiracy theories www.psypost.org/study-finds-...
"...higher scores on measures of narcissism were linked to belief in conspiracy theories and misinformation."
Study finds education level doesn’t stop narcissists from believing conspiracy theories
Does a university degree protect you from fake news? Not if you have high narcissistic traits. New findings suggest that a need to feel special can make even highly educated people fall for conspiracy...
www.psypost.org
January 21, 2026 at 11:08 PM
Introduce tinfoil hats to the narcissist in your life.
"The best of our culture tells complicated stories with shared reverence, never intent on selling the perfect idea of place, but rather sharing stories with oddball honesty about what it means to live here."
For CBC Arts, I wrote about why I think Canada needs to revel in the beauty of its weirdest impulses www.cbc.ca/arts/canadia...
OPINION | Canadian TV needs to get weird again | CBC Arts
In the ‘80s and ‘90s, English Canadian screens were filled with bizarre, fever dream-like shows. Writer Niko Stratis argues that we need to back to that
www.cbc.ca
January 21, 2026 at 10:06 PM
"The best of our culture tells complicated stories with shared reverence, never intent on selling the perfect idea of place, but rather sharing stories with oddball honesty about what it means to live here."
Reposted by Jon Olfert 🌾🍁
Let's get Canadian publisher @tychebooks.bsky.social upcoming kickstarter to 100 followers!
Anthologies are expensive to produce, so they often rely on crowdfunding. It's a great chance to read stories by new-to-you authors!
(It launches next week. I think. 👀)
www.kickstarter.com/projects/tyc...
Anthologies are expensive to produce, so they often rely on crowdfunding. It's a great chance to read stories by new-to-you authors!
(It launches next week. I think. 👀)
www.kickstarter.com/projects/tyc...
Coming soon: Fascination: Dark Fantasy Anthology
A macabre story collection of nature-fueled magic, witches & dark fae. Creepy cottages, haunted homesteads & bespelled woods.
www.kickstarter.com
January 21, 2026 at 9:32 PM
Let's get Canadian publisher @tychebooks.bsky.social upcoming kickstarter to 100 followers!
Anthologies are expensive to produce, so they often rely on crowdfunding. It's a great chance to read stories by new-to-you authors!
(It launches next week. I think. 👀)
www.kickstarter.com/projects/tyc...
Anthologies are expensive to produce, so they often rely on crowdfunding. It's a great chance to read stories by new-to-you authors!
(It launches next week. I think. 👀)
www.kickstarter.com/projects/tyc...
Reposted by Jon Olfert 🌾🍁
Just spotted this: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS for emerging BIPOC writers in Canada: an opportunity to work with Lindsay Wong arsenalpulp.com/News/2025/CA...
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS for emerging BIPOC writers in Canada: an opportunity to work with Lindsay Wong
Arsenal Pulp Press is a book publisher in Vancouver, Canada with over 300 titles currently in print, which include literary fiction and nonfiction; cultural and gender studies; LGBT and multicultural ...
arsenalpulp.com
September 4, 2025 at 5:36 AM
Just spotted this: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS for emerging BIPOC writers in Canada: an opportunity to work with Lindsay Wong arsenalpulp.com/News/2025/CA...
'Auditioning for the syllabus' is the phrase, I think.
That Carney speech at Davos is as worth your time as advertised. NYT is saying he wrote it himself; if so, good on him. There's a lot of obvious stuff about international relations and IPE that politicians don't say out loud so much, and this speech ignored those norms to talk about ignoring norms.
January 21, 2026 at 3:53 PM
'Auditioning for the syllabus' is the phrase, I think.
That Carney speech at Davos is as worth your time as advertised. NYT is saying he wrote it himself; if so, good on him. There's a lot of obvious stuff about international relations and IPE that politicians don't say out loud so much, and this speech ignored those norms to talk about ignoring norms.
January 21, 2026 at 3:50 PM
That Carney speech at Davos is as worth your time as advertised. NYT is saying he wrote it himself; if so, good on him. There's a lot of obvious stuff about international relations and IPE that politicians don't say out loud so much, and this speech ignored those norms to talk about ignoring norms.
Since I'm talking how I love this tiny book of mine, here's more prairie coulees. The kind of place you're from if you've never been a tourist at the Calgary Stampede but you worked there when dad's church friend needed extra hands for cash.
All this, with swords. Fletcher's Flights, coming 2026. 🌾
All this, with swords. Fletcher's Flights, coming 2026. 🌾
January 21, 2026 at 3:20 PM
Since I'm talking how I love this tiny book of mine, here's more prairie coulees. The kind of place you're from if you've never been a tourist at the Calgary Stampede but you worked there when dad's church friend needed extra hands for cash.
All this, with swords. Fletcher's Flights, coming 2026. 🌾
All this, with swords. Fletcher's Flights, coming 2026. 🌾
This novelette is my truest, riskiest, most furious story, maybe the best of my Churchlands and Five Deserts work, and it netted the biggest sale I've made. None of that would've been possible if I wasn't writing about Alberta. I wanted people to see my homeland how I see it. Can't wait to share it.
January 21, 2026 at 3:28 AM
This novelette is my truest, riskiest, most furious story, maybe the best of my Churchlands and Five Deserts work, and it netted the biggest sale I've made. None of that would've been possible if I wasn't writing about Alberta. I wanted people to see my homeland how I see it. Can't wait to share it.
When my Churchlands/Five Deserts novelette Fletcher's Flights comes out, this is the landscape I'm talking about and I'd like to think I've painted it right. The whole bloodsoaked lonesome thing's a love letter to the coulees of Alberta. The land's as much a character as anyone.
January 21, 2026 at 3:09 AM
When my Churchlands/Five Deserts novelette Fletcher's Flights comes out, this is the landscape I'm talking about and I'd like to think I've painted it right. The whole bloodsoaked lonesome thing's a love letter to the coulees of Alberta. The land's as much a character as anyone.
The acceptable-or-marketable range of implied knowledge in speculative fiction could maybe use a closer look while we're at it. Won't kill me to look something up once in a while.
"If you watch an episode of Cheers, you might hear references to foreign filmmakers, to classical musicians, to Russian novelists. The level of assumed knowledge back then was far greater; now, TV is rarely adventurous in its allusions."
TV brain rot: The real reason television shows are getting stupider www.the-independent.com/arts-enterta...
January 20, 2026 at 11:44 PM
The acceptable-or-marketable range of implied knowledge in speculative fiction could maybe use a closer look while we're at it. Won't kill me to look something up once in a while.
Reposted by Jon Olfert 🌾🍁
I didn't know couches did surrogacy
January 20, 2026 at 10:23 PM
I didn't know couches did surrogacy
High hopes of getting back to Edmonton for this if the bid's successful. Alberta's a great place.
Why Edmonton for #Worldcon?
Edmonton is as welcoming, safe, and diverse as it is dramatic and exciting. There are plenty of things to do, from top-notch restaurants to rugged wilderness and urban oddities.
Edmonton is as welcoming, safe, and diverse as it is dramatic and exciting. There are plenty of things to do, from top-notch restaurants to rugged wilderness and urban oddities.
January 20, 2026 at 11:12 PM
High hopes of getting back to Edmonton for this if the bid's successful. Alberta's a great place.
For work reasons I don't post much about politics on here, but this is a big one.
Budget 2025 quietly cut hundreds of millions from needs-based student aid. This petition is part of the campaign to make that not happen.
*If you're Canadian or live in Canada, please sign; it matters.*
Budget 2025 quietly cut hundreds of millions from needs-based student aid. This petition is part of the campaign to make that not happen.
*If you're Canadian or live in Canada, please sign; it matters.*
Petition e-7090 - Petitions
www.ourcommons.ca
January 20, 2026 at 6:52 PM
For work reasons I don't post much about politics on here, but this is a big one.
Budget 2025 quietly cut hundreds of millions from needs-based student aid. This petition is part of the campaign to make that not happen.
*If you're Canadian or live in Canada, please sign; it matters.*
Budget 2025 quietly cut hundreds of millions from needs-based student aid. This petition is part of the campaign to make that not happen.
*If you're Canadian or live in Canada, please sign; it matters.*
Reposted by Jon Olfert 🌾🍁
Sauúti Terrors Has Arrived!
Here we go. “Sauúti Terrors”, the second anthology of stories set in the first SFF Shared World created by African and African Diaspora authors which we've been working on as a collective for more than 4 years, has finally been published by Flame Tree Press! So here's…
Here we go. “Sauúti Terrors”, the second anthology of stories set in the first SFF Shared World created by African and African Diaspora authors which we've been working on as a collective for more than 4 years, has finally been published by Flame Tree Press! So here's…
Sauúti Terrors Has Arrived!
Here we go. “Sauúti Terrors”, the second anthology of stories set in the first SFF Shared World created by African and African Diaspora authors which we've been working on as a collective for more than 4 years, has finally been published by Flame Tree Press! So here's wishing a happy book release day to all of us who made this happen, especially those of you who preordered the book or even picked up copies of…
wtalabi.wordpress.com
January 20, 2026 at 10:25 AM
Sauúti Terrors Has Arrived!
Here we go. “Sauúti Terrors”, the second anthology of stories set in the first SFF Shared World created by African and African Diaspora authors which we've been working on as a collective for more than 4 years, has finally been published by Flame Tree Press! So here's…
Here we go. “Sauúti Terrors”, the second anthology of stories set in the first SFF Shared World created by African and African Diaspora authors which we've been working on as a collective for more than 4 years, has finally been published by Flame Tree Press! So here's…
Looking forward to this one. Hearing from folks coming in from all over.
New pinned post!
We're ramping up for a tonne of TriCon programming and sign-up announcements! First thing is first, dear readers: make sure you've got your tickets!
tricon-halifax.com
We're ramping up for a tonne of TriCon programming and sign-up announcements! First thing is first, dear readers: make sure you've got your tickets!
tricon-halifax.com
January 19, 2026 at 8:44 PM
Looking forward to this one. Hearing from folks coming in from all over.
Flipping through the Globe's Secret Canada database and guides. FOI requests are one of life's truest joys.
www.secretcanada.com/foi-guides-a...
www.secretcanada.com/foi-guides-a...
How to file an FOI request | Secret Canada
Secret Canada helps Canadians understand and use the access system through a database of completed FOI request summaries, guides on how to navigate the filing process and the latest news.
www.secretcanada.com
January 19, 2026 at 8:23 PM
Flipping through the Globe's Secret Canada database and guides. FOI requests are one of life's truest joys.
www.secretcanada.com/foi-guides-a...
www.secretcanada.com/foi-guides-a...
Whirlwind 16 hours. Sold a novelette, half the province lost power, half a night's sleep, dug the van out and secured hot food long before sunrise, scraped out a few hours of remote work using a trickle of phone data, cut and hung a ton of cement board. Glad I've been focusing on my back at the gym.
January 19, 2026 at 6:51 PM
Whirlwind 16 hours. Sold a novelette, half the province lost power, half a night's sleep, dug the van out and secured hot food long before sunrise, scraped out a few hours of remote work using a trickle of phone data, cut and hung a ton of cement board. Glad I've been focusing on my back at the gym.
The quintessential Atlantic Canada drive-through experience. "Alright, my love, come on up, buddy."
January 19, 2026 at 9:56 AM
The quintessential Atlantic Canada drive-through experience. "Alright, my love, come on up, buddy."
Reposted by Jon Olfert 🌾🍁
Calling all poets: Eye to the Telescope is accepting submissions for issue 60, edited by Angela Acosta, on the theme of Paying Tribute.
Find more details and a form to submit here:
eyetothetelescope.com/submit.html
Find more details and a form to submit here:
eyetothetelescope.com/submit.html
Eye to the Telescope
Eye to the Telescope, the quarterly online journal of SFPA, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, an international organization of speculative poets.
eyetothetelescope.com
January 19, 2026 at 2:56 AM
Calling all poets: Eye to the Telescope is accepting submissions for issue 60, edited by Angela Acosta, on the theme of Paying Tribute.
Find more details and a form to submit here:
eyetothetelescope.com/submit.html
Find more details and a form to submit here:
eyetothetelescope.com/submit.html
Relevant to the interests of no few of you
Blueskis, studies have shown that when folks see or hear about a book more than five times, they are likely to check it out, and buy it.
So in the spirit of creating buzz, here is the gorgeous cover of THE WESTERNERS, which will be published on March 31!
So in the spirit of creating buzz, here is the gorgeous cover of THE WESTERNERS, which will be published on March 31!
January 18, 2026 at 4:51 PM
Relevant to the interests of no few of you