Vajra Chandrasekera
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vajra.me
Vajra Chandrasekera
@vajra.me
Writer. Revenant. Wrote THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS (2023, Nebula, Ignyte, Crawford, and Locus awards) & RAKESFALL (2024, Le Guin Prize and Otherwise award.) Colombo/New York. https://vajra.me
Pinned
we (will soon) have such sights to show you
Reposted by Vajra Chandrasekera
I found the ep in PLURIBUS where Carol--white, American--meets 5 non-white, non-American survivors of the hivemind off-putting, but in a way that made me curious to see where Gilligan was going. Now that I have, I wrote about how empire, privilege, genAI, & resistance converge in the show's subtext:
Resisting the Hivemind: Pluribus, Generative AI, and Empire - Reactor
While its creator tell us that Pluribus is not about advent of generative AI, it's difficult not to spot the many places where the fledgling tech and extraterrestrial hivemind overlap.
reactormag.com
January 14, 2026 at 6:53 PM
Reposted by Vajra Chandrasekera
Q: will this help?
A: yes. celebrating the misfortune of bad people is one of the ways society discourages antisocial behavior

Q: is it healthy?
A: also yes. one needs to pretend that the unaccountable can at least be laid low by chance
Before publicly celebrating terrible things happening to bad people, maybe don't just ask yourself if such statements are "fair" or if those people "deserve" what's happening to them...

Maybe ask yourself:
"Will this help?" and "Is this healthy?"

And take a moment if the answer to both is "No."
January 14, 2026 at 7:21 AM
Congrats PKD Award nominees!

SUNWARD, @willalex.bsky.social
OUTLAW PLANET, M.R. Carey
CASUAL, @kojiadae.bsky.social
THE IMMEASURABLE HEAVEN, @caspargeon.bsky.social
UNCERTAIN SONS, @thomasha.bsky.social
SCALES, Christopher Hinz
CITY OF ALL SEASONS, @oliverklangmead.bsky.social & Aliya Whiteley
2026 Philip K. Dick Award Nominees locusmag.com/2026/01...
January 14, 2026 at 1:11 AM
Reposted by Vajra Chandrasekera
2026 Philip K. Dick Award Nominees locusmag.com/2026/01...
January 14, 2026 at 1:00 AM
Reposted by Vajra Chandrasekera
With THE MISHEARD WORLD out next month, it's the perfect time to explore the weird and wonderful worlds of Aliya Whiteley!

Each book is a standalone, wildly imaginative, mind-bending, and perfect for fans of @vajra.me and @oliverklangmead.bsky.social.

So why not dive in? https://geni.us/misheardw
January 13, 2026 at 4:49 PM
Reposted by Vajra Chandrasekera
A very important thing for you to know about Icelandic is that the word "rassgat" (butthole) is used as an endearment about cute things. So if you say someone is "algjört rassgat" (a total butthole) it means they are VERY cute. If the cuteness is overwhelming we say "rúsínurassgat" (raisin asshole).
January 13, 2026 at 12:07 PM
the fact that there are people who would (and did) buy this shit
Eric Adams, former NYC mayor, launched a memecoin (cryptocurrency) today. He marketed it as an “NYC Token” and used media appearances and his social media to promote it.

Within hours, Adams then drained its liquidity, apparently having scammed investors out of $3.4 million—a move called a rug pull.
January 13, 2026 at 11:33 AM
Reposted by Vajra Chandrasekera
😂
Perhaps the surest sign of AI not being super intelligent is the amount of tailored scams targeting the finances of authors, which is as rewarding as trying to mug a seagull.
January 12, 2026 at 12:05 PM
Reposted by Vajra Chandrasekera
Hey worms, give this a listen! A fascinating discussion of aesthetic regime change, the conflation of high art and realpolitik, mistranslating Gramsci, and, of course, spoilers for The Works of Vermin.

Really cool episode--can't wait to read the essay
January 12, 2026 at 7:14 PM
Reposted by Vajra Chandrasekera
Oh shit I didn't realize Carmen Maria Machado won a Nobel Peace Prize but honestly I support it even as I wonder what she's doing in Venezuela instead of working on her next book.

(source: nymag.com/intelligence...)
January 10, 2026 at 6:44 PM
Same. Third and fourth novel at different stages of edits, fifth being drafted. Multiple shorter projects also on the table (it's a big messy table)
The true secret to my long career: As a midlist writer hanging on to my career one book at a time, I can only control the work I do, not outcomes.
So I work: Drafting Novel W while waiting for edit notes on Novel F. When edits & draft are done, I'll return to the half finished & overdue Novel L.
January 11, 2026 at 1:28 AM
Reposted by Vajra Chandrasekera
I fished out this excellent thread on the “but AI for medical uses is great” topic, highly recommend you read it
This is not an LLM—so it doesn't have language-related issues—but it's important to be clear that it is very much part of (and in fact represents a new spearhead into) the neoliberal drive to privatize essential public services, and represents tremendously harmful outcomes globally
Using an AI tool, one additional case of cancer was spotted per 1,000 women screened. Crucially this was without increasing false positives - seems an excellent result
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
January 9, 2026 at 6:39 PM
Reposted by Vajra Chandrasekera
the discourse on what jobs are acceptable to replace with generative AI reveals a lot about what we think of other people's jobs
January 9, 2026 at 6:48 AM
congratulations everyone
I’d just like to say how happy it makes me that not a single person has even mentioned his tedious antiwoke rant this year. There is *some* good in this world.
Reminder to the SF/F genre that Dave Truesdale emerges annually from his pearl-clutching, snowflake cave to write rambling rants for the Tangent Online Recommended Reading List.

This year he whines about SFWA for 2,000 words, using 7 of those words to admit he hasn't been a member in 22 years. 1/2
January 9, 2026 at 3:03 PM
that adds up to 100% commitment to the bit (the bit is empire)
January 9, 2026 at 2:58 PM
Reposted by Vajra Chandrasekera
maybe the New Weird is dead in the same sense of the father in Rakesfall that keeps coming back to have tea in the kitchen
January 9, 2026 at 8:37 AM
Delighting in the perdurance of the critical essay as a form: Audsley King's “Sweet and Golden Dreams” is about Gene Wolfe’s PEACE (a book I am very much looking forward to reading) and my RAKESFALL greenpigsinheaven.wordpress.com/2026/01/06/s...
Sweet and Golden Dreams
empire and bloodline anxiety in vajra chandrasekera’s rakesfall and gene wolfe’s peace But long before this transfiguration had completed itself, Ashlyme had shrugged and turned his bac…
greenpigsinheaven.wordpress.com
January 9, 2026 at 12:43 AM
Reposted by Vajra Chandrasekera
This is a vetted fundraiser for the family of Renee Good, the woman who was killed by ICE in Minneapolis.

www.gofundme.com/f/support-fo...
Donate to Support for Renee Good’s wife and son, organized by Mattie Weiss
Please support the wife and son of Renee Good as they grapple with the devastating … Mattie Weiss needs your support for Support for Renee Good’s wife and son
www.gofundme.com
January 8, 2026 at 2:29 AM
Reposted by Vajra Chandrasekera
“i want back my rocking chairs, / solipsist sunsets, / & coastal jungle sounds...”

A poem by Renee Nicole Good, who was murdered by ICE earlier today.

lithub.com/renee-nicole...
Renee Nicole Good, murdered by ICE, was a prize-winning poet. Here’s that poem.
Renee Nicole Good, 37, mother to a six-year-old boy, was murdered earlier today by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, a few blocks from her home. According to the Minnesota Star Tribune: [An ICE agent] s…
lithub.com
January 8, 2026 at 3:54 AM
Reposted by Vajra Chandrasekera
A friend in Minneapolis just sent me this video. Looks like thousands have come together for a vigil after an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good. This was my neighborhood for several years before coming to Portland.
January 8, 2026 at 1:05 AM
Reposted by Vajra Chandrasekera
Kicking off 2026 by writing about one of the best books of 2025. Also Walter Benjamin, baroque art, Alejo Carpentier, etc etc. The New Weird is back, baby (the New Weird never left because it's a methodology, not a periodization)
January 5, 2026 at 2:08 PM
did this late last year and it's been working well
One of the goals this year is to treat social media more like how we used to “go on the computer” in the olden days: brief and concentrated instead of diffuse over the course of the day
January 5, 2026 at 2:17 PM
This has been the default imperialist position for centuries, so really the oddity was that brief period of comfortable unipolar hegemony where it seemed gauche to say it out loud. No clearer sign of late imperial anxiety than the contemporary return of this old ass monocle and pith helmet blather
On X, a senior U.S. Justice Department official is promoting a post that praises colonization as “one of the greatest things that ever happened to the backwards parts of the world.”👇
January 5, 2026 at 1:34 AM
Reposted by Vajra Chandrasekera
Rakesfall, by @vajra.me

Some stories take more than one lifetime to tell. Two children meet during the Sri Lankan civil war & constantly run from & seek each other through their reincarnations, from the present into the distant future.

I was blown away. Do yourself a favour and read this!
💙📚🪐
January 3, 2026 at 4:57 PM
Reposted by Vajra Chandrasekera
We asked Aliya Whiteley for her best books of 2025, a book she'd love for Xmas & her anticipated reads of 2026.

Read the full article https://geni.us/SolarisBks2025 to find out why she picked @vajra.me @bentufnell.bsky.social & @annecharnock.bsky.social !

https://geni.us/misheardw
January 4, 2026 at 4:32 PM