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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 6h

Also I found the Translator's Note quite helpful about explaining some of the style/form choices

Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 6h

I would be curious to know how many hours your ecopy thinks you have to read (assuming it is on a device that estimates reading time)

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 6h

in fact to be fair I have a physical ARC and it's not one you can easily pick up full stop.

ARC of Ice by Jacek Dukaj, all 1177 pages of it, sitting on a scales. It weighs in at approximately 1.2kg.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 6h

I have literally cleared my schedule, including taking a couple of days off the day job. It's not one you can easily pick up and read five pages in a break!

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 17h

Very upset, I did not need another entry on the list of things I really want to read before the end of the year

Abigail Nussbaum @abigailnussbaum.bsky.social · 20h

New blog post: on Jordan Prosser's delightfully gonzo debut novel Big Time, which crosses Almost Famous with 1984 and a drug that can make you see the future, and asks: what power does art have during times of fascism? wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2025/10/rece...

Recent Reading: <i>Big Time</i> by Jordan Prosser

There's something almost irresistibly appealing about the musical biopic. It combines melodrama and genuine accomplishment. It conveys profo...

wrongquestions.blogspot.com

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 1d

Took me a while to get through this episode (two hours!), but this is a great set of interviews with some of the people behind the current incarnation of SH (including Gautam)

Gautam Bhatia @gautambhatia88.bsky.social · 6d

For @strangehorizons.bsky.social 25th anniversary, I spoke about my (almost) decade at the magazine, its anarchic nature, changes in the genre space, editing SFF non-fiction, and how the extractivism special issue came to be imagined (starts at 1 hr 24 mins):

strangehorizons.com/wordpress/po...

Celebrating 25 Years with The Strange Horizons Editorial Collective

In this special episode of Strange Horizons at 25, Senior Podcast Editor Kat Kourbeti and Editor Michael Ireland welcome current members of the Strange Horizons Editorial Collective for a series of…

strangehorizons.com

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 1d

And this is an indirect connection, but the discussion of hope made me think of KSR's "A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations", which rather miraculously is still online at InfinityPlus: www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/hist...

A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations - a novelette by Kim Stanley Robinson

The Twentieth Century: an age of mass destruction and suffering. Frank Churchill: a historian, an author charged with summing up this period. A powerful reflection on what we have been, what we are an...

www.infinityplus.co.uk

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 1d

Great piece. What I particularly like in here is the discussion of the novel's balance between witnessing and acting as responses to things in the world.

Roseanna Pendlebury @chloroformtea.bsky.social · 1d

I only finished it yesterday but When There Are Wolves Again by E. J. Swift was so good (and so singular), I couldn't help but write about it immediately.

When There Are Wolves Again – E. J. Swift

The new novel from the author of The Coral Bones1, When There Are Wolves Again follows two women in Britain from the present, stretching out across the years into the future of the late 21st centur…

readerofelse.wordpress.com

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 2d

I apologise for doubting

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 2d

Please lord tell me that is highlight on the image and not on the actual book

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Reposted by Niall Harrison

Locus Magazine @locusmag.bsky.social · 3d

“THE CREATOR is a more ambiguous title than it first appears, with every character in the story fitting the role at one point or another.” @niallharrison reviews Aliya Whiteley

SHORT TAKE: The Creator by Aliya Whiteley: Review by Niall Harrison

The Creator, Aliya Whiteley (NewCon Press 978-1-914-95398-9, £8.99, 104pp, tp) May 2025. Cover by Ian Whates. NewCon Press’s latest batch of novellas is led off by the latest from Aliya Whiteley. I…

locusmag.com

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Reposted by Niall Harrison

Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 4d

"When We are Wolves Again is not only the novel we have been waiting for from E. J. Swift, one of the UK’s brightest younger talents in speculative fiction, but the novel we also have been waiting for as readers." Amen to that. strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

When There are Wolves Again by E.J. Swift

When There Are Wolves Again is, put simply, the most important, the most courageous, the most uplifting novel I have read in years.

strangehorizons.com

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 3d

a man wearing glasses says i never said thank you

Alt: gif from either The Dark Knight or The Dark Knight Rises, can't remember which, of Commissioner Gordon saying "I never said thank you" and Batman saying "and you'll never have to". It's funny because I'm comparing Dan to Batman.

media.tenor.com

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 3d

Maybe this will help us bsky.app/profile/danh...

Dan Hartland @danhartland.bsky.social · 3d

📣 NEW CRITICAL FRIENDS!

In a new ep of the @strangehorizons.bsky.social SFF criticism podcast, I talk with @redfernjon.bsky.social and Nileena Sunil about books that might be longer, and others that could be shorter.

How to read a text that offers too little, or too much, stuff? Some ideas.

Critical Friends Episode 16: Length and Breadth

Dan Hartland is joined by Redfern Jon Barrett and Nileena Sunil to discuss those novels that feel too sure or not long enough: what's behind that feeling we have that a text is lacking something, o…

strangehorizons.com

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 4d

"When We are Wolves Again is not only the novel we have been waiting for from E. J. Swift, one of the UK’s brightest younger talents in speculative fiction, but the novel we also have been waiting for as readers." Amen to that. strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

When There are Wolves Again by E.J. Swift

When There Are Wolves Again is, put simply, the most important, the most courageous, the most uplifting novel I have read in years.

strangehorizons.com

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Reposted by Niall Harrison

Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 5d

A brief piece on Aliya Whiteley's latest novella: locusmag.com/review/short...

SHORT TAKE: The Creator by Aliya Whiteley: Review by Niall Harrison

The Creator, Aliya Whiteley (NewCon Press 978-1-914-95398-9, £8.99, 104pp, tp) May 2025. Cover by Ian Whates. NewCon Press’s latest batch of novellas is led off by the latest from Aliya Whiteley. I…

locusmag.com

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 4d

I've already been thinking about this, and I'm not sure what "justifying" means. Is it the opportunity cost thing, do I have to conclude that it is better than four normal novels? Does it have to do something that can *only* be done at this scale? Is it enough if I just enjoy the time spent?

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 4d

It is doing a *lot*, but still.

Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 4d

And based on what I've just googled/estimated, Ice is a comfortable 100k longer than the Goddard! It is probably more words than everything I read for my last Locus column put together. It's a good thing I have a few days off next week otherwise there is no way I would make it by deadline.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 4d

It definitely does have that thing where you have to make the mental adjustment of, right, I am reading this Very Long Book, I am giving myself over to its pace and rhythm, this is my life now for the next few weeks, I accept the opportunity cost and am at peace with it.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 4d

In this limited and specific case, yes, part of me wishes they had sent an eARC rather than a physical one.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 4d

(It is also not *great* for female characters so far, but maybe that will change.)

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 4d

It is slow going and quite intoxicating and I feel I can dimly perceive the shape it is building but who knows.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 4d

By which I mean it is about the understanding of History and its processes, as explored through philosophical dialogues and as reported by an unreliable narrator. Or perhaps a narrator more honest than any other.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 4d

I have now read 325 pages, or five chapters, or perhaps 125,000 words, or about one-quarter of this novel. So far it's a little bit like Ian R MacLeod's The Light Ages rewritten in collaboration by Ada Palmer and Thomas Mann.

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