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Reaching the Finish Line with Zamyatin, Le Guin, and Foucault Still in My Head

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Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · 6d

I recommend Zamyatin's We. Written in 1921, it's a precursor to dystopian classics such as 1984 and Brave New World – better, at least relative to the depth of its political narrative.

ridleypark.blog/2025/10/15/r...

#books #classics #reading #AmReading #novels #dystopian #fiction #Literature

The book ends, as these things always do, with a sigh and a stack of annotated pages. I’ve just closed the cover on Zamyatin’s We, and, like a cigarette slipped into the afterword, there sat Ursula…

The Wrong Dystopias: Why ‘We’ May Be the Book for Now

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Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Sep 17

Stop quoting Orwell memes. Forget 1984 and Brave New World. The real mirror of our times is Zamyatin’s We: a world where we happily surrender ourselves to the algorithm.

ridleypark.blog/2025/09/17/t...

#Dystopia #Orwell #CriticalTheory #Books #booksuggestions #Philosophy #Surveillance

Every time the news cycle coughs up another surveillance scandal, someone posts an Orwell meme. When pharmaceutical companies peddle happy pills, a Huxley meme pops up. 1984 and Brave New World hav…

What’s With the Violet Aliens?

Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Sep 11

Octavia Butler’s Lilith in Dawn is meant as radical, but she ends up repeating archetypes of Western femininity. Judith Butler would see her as pure performativity.

My reflection → philosophics.blog/2025/09/08/b...

#Philosophy #CriticalTheory #OctaviaButler #JudithButler #Postmodernism #AmReading

$women looking in mirror with fractured reflections$

Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Sep 9

Aliens don’t breathe, but authors live off reviews. 💜
Thank you for reading Sustenance and sharing your words.

📝 New post: ridleypark.blog/2025/09/09/t...

#IndieAuthor #SciFiBooks #SpecFic #LiterarySciFi #WeirdLit #AlienFiction #BookTwitter #BookReview #KindleUnlimited #KindleBook #SciFi #Iowa

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Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Sep 8

👽 Literary sci-fi meets cornfields and confusion.
Sustenance explores alien encounters, human projection, and awkward rural intimacy—with a healthy dose of crop-circle weirdness.
📕 Out now in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle:
www.amazon.com/dp/B0F9VGH8FP

#SpecFic #SciFi #IndieAuthor #WeirdFiction

Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Sep 8

What’s with the violet aliens on the cover of Sustenance? Midwest barns. Crop circles. American Gothic.

ridleypark.blog/2025/09/08/w...

📚 Kindle edition is FREE
www.amazon.com/dp/B0F9BDWKFD

#kindlebooks #SciFiBooks #bookcoverdesign #Books #America #IndieAuthors #coverart #KindleUnlimited

🛸 A Closer Look at the Cover of Sustenance 👽 People ask me: What’s with the aliens on the front cover of Sustenance? Fair enough. Let’s talk about it. Sustenance is set in Iowa – real, dusty, soybe…

On Agency, Suicide, and the Moving Train

Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Sep 7

Sartre: “Inaction is a choice.”
Zinn: “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”
Butler’s alien: “You committed mass suicide.”
Maybe agency is just a Modernist myth we don’t actually need.
👉 philosophics.blog/2025/09/07/o...

#Philosophy #Postmodernism #Agency #ScienceFiction #Books #AmReading

Octavia Butler’s Dawn opens with aliens who claim humanity “committed mass suicide.” But who really tips the apple cart of history? Sartre, Zinn, and the Stabilisers, Survivors, and Sycophants all …

philosophics.blog

Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Sep 6

🚨 Free for 2 days! 🚨
My novella Sustenance – small-town Iowa meets the uncanny – is free on Kindle Sept 7–8. Always free with KU, but free for everyone with this promo. 📚
www.amazon.com/dp/B0F9PTK9N2

#FreeBook #KindleFree #SpecFic #LiteraryFiction #IndieAuthor #BookTwitter #AmReading #Book #Books

Sustenance

Amazon.com: Sustenance: 9798284521380: Park, Ridley: Books

www.amazon.com

Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Sep 4

⭐⭐⭐ I finished Anna Kavan’s Ice. tl;dr: I gave it a 3 of 5 stars. Fuller review on blog or Goodreads.

ridleypark.blog/2025/09/03/i...

#AmReading #AnnaKavan #Slipstream #SpeculativeFiction #LiteraryFiction #ModernistFiction #WeirdLit #ExistentialFiction #BookBlog #BookReview #Book #Review #Books

Ice by Anna Kavan – Five Chapters In

Five chapters down, and Anna Kavan’s Ice is already proving itself to be less a novel than a feverish novelette-length hallucination. It hits differently than the sprawling sagas I’ve been chewing …

Ice by Anna Kavan – Five Chapters In

Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Sep 3

Five chapters into Anna Kavan’s Ice, and it’s less spree than seizure. A frozen hallucination where compulsion outpaces logic—dive in.
ridleypark.blog/2025/09/03/i...

#AmReading #AnnaKavan #Slipstream #SpeculativeFiction #LiteraryFiction #ModernistFiction #WeirdLit #ExistentialFiction #BookBlog

Five chapters down, and Anna Kavan’s Ice is already proving itself to be less a novel than a feverish novelette-length hallucination. It hits differently than the sprawling sagas I’ve been chewing …

I’ve shut down my personal Facebook account. Inevitably, that dragged the Ridley Park page into the digital abyss with it. Collateral damage in the war against nonsense. Why? Because I’ve grown tir…

Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Sep 2

Facebook: deleted.
Ridley: collateral damage.
The bots won’t be missed. I may re-establish a Ridley-only presence, but for now, we’re free of the machine.

ridleypark.blog/2025/09/02/d...

#Facebook #Meta #Bots #Kafkaesque #AmWriting #Writing #SocialMedia #BlogPost #Bollox #Blogging #AuthorLife

Done with Facebook

The Veneer of Human Exceptionalism in Art

Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Sep 2

I don’t wish to be branded an AI apologist. Some say AI art lacks feelings. I don’t need hubris to validate my art.

ridleypark.blog/2025/09/02/t...

#AIArt #Philosophy #Art #GenerativeAI #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Creativity #Innovation #Technology #CriticalThinking #Writing #AmWriting

I don’t want to develop a reputation as an AI apologist – but I also don’t buy the myth that human art is fuelled by some mystical essence unavailable to machines. As a writer, artist, and musician…

Gattaca (1997): Completing the List, But at What Cost?

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Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Sep 2

I’ve finally completed the so-called dystopia canon – Orwell, Atwood, Burgess, Huxley… and now Gattaca. Sharp premise; rigid script. 👍Completion achieved. 👎Satisfaction minimal.

ridleypark.blog/2025/09/01/g...

#Critique #ScienceFiction #Writing #amwriting #SciFi #movie #Review #movieReview

Completing the dystopia list should feel triumphant, but Gattaca made it a chore. The premise is clever enough – genetic determinism as social caste — but the script is wholly deterministic itself,…

I never studied creative writing at university—economics and finance swallowed my schedule whole. With only a few electives to spare, I chose philosophy instead. Still, I managed a couple of critic…

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Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Sep 1

Never took creative writing at uni—finance swallowed that dream. What I got instead: feminist critiques, penguins, and a final essay signed “My name is not David Grace.”

ridleypark.blog/2025/09/01/r...

#WritingCommunity #AuthorLife #LitCrit #Philosophy #AmWriting #English #Writing #nostalgia

Ridley at Uni

The Dystopia Venn: Four Circles of Absolute Nonsense

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Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Sep 1

This is not a political post. The Venn in this diagram feels viscerally correct, but the unions don't work.

ridleypark.blog/2025/08/31/n...

#Dystopia #Philosophy #Satire #Orwell #Atwood #Huxley #Burgess #TheMatrix #Gattaca #Brazil #SoylentGreen #AnimalFarm #Fahrenheit451 #BraveNewWorld #RidleyPark

The Dystopia Venn meme has been cluttering up my feeds, four smug circles pretending to classify Orwell, Atwood, Burgess and the rest into some grand unifying theory of nightmare futures. It works …

Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Aug 31

You know people who can end a story in a straight line? What sorcery. haha

Needle’s Edge: Narrative Origami

Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Aug 31

Hoping this isn't considered self-promotion.
ridleypark.blog/2025/08/29/n...

Editing Needle’s Edge has taken longer than writing it. Drafting was a high—editing is a grind. Recently I untangled a plotline that had started to resemble Inception on ketamine. Flashbacks within…

Needle’s Edge: Pregnancy Continuity

Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Aug 31

I think I can move this out of the ICU and into recovery. haha

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Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Aug 30

Editing isn’t always polish; it’s surgery. Spent today untangling a misplaced pregnancy in Needle’s Edge and stitching the timeline back together.
ridleypark.blog/2025/08/30/n...

#WritingCommunity #AmEditing #Fiction #Editing #AmWriting #LiteraryFiction #IndieAuthor #Writing #Books #FictionWriting

Editing is often pitched as polishing, but sometimes it’s surgery. Today, I’ve been elbows-deep in untangling the timeline of a misplaced pregnancy in Needle’s Edge, resetting dates, pruning contra…

This is as much a reminder for me as a PSA. Time is the most limited resource you’ve got. Consider your goals, and plan accordingly. Not everyone has concrete goals. As writers, we likely do.…

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Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Aug 30

Finding Focus ⌛🧐 This is as much a reminder for me as a PSA. Time is the most limited resource you’ve got.
ridleypark.blog/2025/08/30/f...
#amwriting #amwritingfiction #writingcommunity #writing #writingtips #timemanagement #books #timemanagementtips #PSA #book #time

Focus Matters

Needle’s Edge: Narrative Origami

Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Aug 29

Spent more time editing Needle’s Edge than drafting it. Editing isn’t polishing; it’s grinding, chiselling, archaeology.

ridleypark.blog/2025/08/29/n...

#WritingCommunity #AmEditing #RidleyPark #Fiction #LiteraryFiction #IndieAuthor #BookEditing #StoryStructure #books #writing #editing #structure

Editing Needle’s Edge has taken longer than writing it. Drafting was a high—editing is a grind. Recently I untangled a plotline that had started to resemble Inception on ketamine. Flashbacks within…

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Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Aug 29

Kafka gave us Gregor Samsa: turned into vermin, stripped of usefulness, left to rot in silence. Irvine Welsh answered with Boab Coyle in The Granton Star Cause.
philosophics.blog/2025/08/29/b...

#AmReading #AmWatching #CriticalTheory #SocialCommentary #LiteraryAnalysis #BookCommunity #Storytelling

Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Aug 28

A mate asked me to line edit his AI-helped manuscript for compensation. I declined because I can't justify the time. I agreed to Beta-lite read it. We discussed how he used AI. Essentially, he wrote the skeleton and let the AI help with the meat. Not my genre, but was better than many human authors.

Ridley Park @ridleypark.bsky.social · Aug 28

No, but… On the other saide of the equation, I use AI for pre-Alpha reading – and a sanity check for Alpha and pre-Beta reading. I figure I can't have too many perspectives. I need to vet the responses anyway, no? 🤔 Also, I'm not sure I'd be a good Beta reader anyway. 😜