Val Nolan
@vallescurarule.bsky.social
Co-author of Spec Fic for Newbies 1 & 2; author of Neil Jordan: Works for the Page; Sturgeon/BSFA/BFA finalist; Locus Rec List; articles in Irish Uni Review, symplokē, Science Fiction Studies, Irish Studies Review, JGNC; fiction in many venues... He/Him
Pinned
Val Nolan
@vallescurarule.bsky.social
· Oct 23
My three book projects together 😀 Neil Jordan: Works for the Page from Cork University Press, and Spec Fic for Newbies: A Beginner's Guide to Writing Subgenres of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror vols. 1 & 2, co-authored with @tiffaniangus.bsky.social, available from @lunapress.bsky.social!
Reposted by Val Nolan
via The New Yorker, Ellis Rosen cartoon
December 23, 2025 at 5:31 AM
via The New Yorker, Ellis Rosen cartoon
Reposted by Val Nolan
“I sat down
on something that wasn’t there. I sat
down again and listened to the buzz
of a last thought
a last thought leaving its empty hive
for the winter.”
‘After the Bee’ by Matthew Francis
(from Blizzard, 1996)
on something that wasn’t there. I sat
down again and listened to the buzz
of a last thought
a last thought leaving its empty hive
for the winter.”
‘After the Bee’ by Matthew Francis
(from Blizzard, 1996)
December 22, 2025 at 10:59 AM
“I sat down
on something that wasn’t there. I sat
down again and listened to the buzz
of a last thought
a last thought leaving its empty hive
for the winter.”
‘After the Bee’ by Matthew Francis
(from Blizzard, 1996)
on something that wasn’t there. I sat
down again and listened to the buzz
of a last thought
a last thought leaving its empty hive
for the winter.”
‘After the Bee’ by Matthew Francis
(from Blizzard, 1996)
Reposted by Val Nolan
GenAI cannot summarise anything because it cannot analyse anything because there is no intelligence there. This entire premise starts with a lie and the deceit builds from there.
The “AI” has not read the book. Even if the book was in its training data, it has just absorbed it as a set of statistics. It will juggle you a “summary” that might or might not relate to the conclusions of the actual text. The only way you’ll know is to read it yourself.
This is one of the reasons I remain horrified by seeing @historians.org suggest "ways to use gAI" that included this:
December 22, 2025 at 8:26 AM
GenAI cannot summarise anything because it cannot analyse anything because there is no intelligence there. This entire premise starts with a lie and the deceit builds from there.
Always feels like a moral failure when the cat's wet food doesn't come out of the packet in one piece 🙃
December 19, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Always feels like a moral failure when the cat's wet food doesn't come out of the packet in one piece 🙃
Reposted by Val Nolan
-Comes into your space uninvited, without permission
-Greedily uses up resources preferentially
- Forces a new mode of existence on you
-Steals your own shit to sell back to you
-Desperately wants to convince you that its arrival is good, that these are glad tidings
AI or colonialism?
-Greedily uses up resources preferentially
- Forces a new mode of existence on you
-Steals your own shit to sell back to you
-Desperately wants to convince you that its arrival is good, that these are glad tidings
AI or colonialism?
December 19, 2025 at 3:45 PM
-Comes into your space uninvited, without permission
-Greedily uses up resources preferentially
- Forces a new mode of existence on you
-Steals your own shit to sell back to you
-Desperately wants to convince you that its arrival is good, that these are glad tidings
AI or colonialism?
-Greedily uses up resources preferentially
- Forces a new mode of existence on you
-Steals your own shit to sell back to you
-Desperately wants to convince you that its arrival is good, that these are glad tidings
AI or colonialism?
Reposted by Val Nolan
Any article observing that the AI bubble is about to burst *but then suggesting AI is too important to our financial systems to be allowed to fail* is missing the point. Generative AI is a massive fraud and a brain drain on humanity, even leaving theft and resource issues aside.
December 19, 2025 at 5:21 AM
Any article observing that the AI bubble is about to burst *but then suggesting AI is too important to our financial systems to be allowed to fail* is missing the point. Generative AI is a massive fraud and a brain drain on humanity, even leaving theft and resource issues aside.
This is one of the best explanations I have ever seen for why the ideal way to structure the writing day for me is one or two hours of cycling in the morning to come up with ideas and then the rest of the day to implement them 😀
Thread 👇
Thread 👇
Would you like to know why you get your creative ideas in the shower?
I know a secret. It's about neurology.
Pst. C'mere. Let me tell you about the Default Mode Network and the Task Positive Network. The DMN and the TPN, babies. 1/
I know a secret. It's about neurology.
Pst. C'mere. Let me tell you about the Default Mode Network and the Task Positive Network. The DMN and the TPN, babies. 1/
December 19, 2025 at 3:01 PM
This is one of the best explanations I have ever seen for why the ideal way to structure the writing day for me is one or two hours of cycling in the morning to come up with ideas and then the rest of the day to implement them 😀
Thread 👇
Thread 👇
Reposted by Val Nolan
Science for Fiction has now made the leap to cyberspace as the Science for Fiction podcast, made in conjunction with the @sffoundation.bsky.social The first episode is me interviewing @defjaf.bsky.social about his new book The Random Universe. Have a listen! apple.co/44A5GIg
Science for Fiction
Science Podcast · Real science that inspires science fiction, from the latest in cosmology to the strangest biology. Brought to you by the Science Fiction Foundation.
apple.co
December 18, 2025 at 4:40 PM
Science for Fiction has now made the leap to cyberspace as the Science for Fiction podcast, made in conjunction with the @sffoundation.bsky.social The first episode is me interviewing @defjaf.bsky.social about his new book The Random Universe. Have a listen! apple.co/44A5GIg
Always going to be the Adama maneuver! #SoSayWeAll
December 17, 2025 at 9:45 AM
Always going to be the Adama maneuver! #SoSayWeAll
The Avatar movies are a weirdly fascinating phenomenon. Like Schrödinger's cinema or something; they have basically zero culture footprint and yet I'm honestly surprised that this is only the third one. I thought there'd been, like, five of these already.
December 17, 2025 at 9:17 AM
The Avatar movies are a weirdly fascinating phenomenon. Like Schrödinger's cinema or something; they have basically zero culture footprint and yet I'm honestly surprised that this is only the third one. I thought there'd been, like, five of these already.
Reposted by Val Nolan
BSFA Awards longlist nominations are now open! I’d be grateful if BSFA members would consider my @speculativeinsight.bsky.social essay 'The Dublin Portal… Or The Dublin Intrusion?' in the Best Non-Fiction (Short) category. Find it here: www.speculativeinsight.com/essays/dubli...
November 19, 2025 at 1:41 PM
BSFA Awards longlist nominations are now open! I’d be grateful if BSFA members would consider my @speculativeinsight.bsky.social essay 'The Dublin Portal… Or The Dublin Intrusion?' in the Best Non-Fiction (Short) category. Find it here: www.speculativeinsight.com/essays/dubli...
Reposted by Val Nolan
Reposted by Val Nolan
‘We live with danger’: Ukrainian farmers risk deadly harvest in fields sown with bombs
‘We live with danger’: Ukrainian farmers risk deadly harvest in fields sown with bombs
Territory nearly twice the size of Ireland is thought to be contaminated with mines and other explosives
www.irishtimes.com
December 16, 2025 at 3:02 PM
‘We live with danger’: Ukrainian farmers risk deadly harvest in fields sown with bombs
Reposted by Val Nolan
Inside the mother of all Neolithic tombs ... Newgrange in Ireland. This photo, from excavator Michael O'Kelly's book, shows the chamber (with spiral carving) that is illuminated via the famous roofbox opening at winter solstice. A 5,200-yr-old celebration of the return of the sun. #TombTuesday
December 16, 2025 at 8:29 AM
Inside the mother of all Neolithic tombs ... Newgrange in Ireland. This photo, from excavator Michael O'Kelly's book, shows the chamber (with spiral carving) that is illuminated via the famous roofbox opening at winter solstice. A 5,200-yr-old celebration of the return of the sun. #TombTuesday
Would love to be able to figure out how to remove this hate symbol from my Word screen.
December 16, 2025 at 10:42 AM
Would love to be able to figure out how to remove this hate symbol from my Word screen.
Reposted by Val Nolan
Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.
December 13, 2025 at 12:02 AM
Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.
👇👇👇
"Write what you know" itself is terrible advice when given by people who don't grasp its meaning.
It means "do your research", not "only write your personal, lived experience".
It means "do your research", not "only write your personal, lived experience".
What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever received? The write what you know quip doesn’t work out well when readers don’t like what you know 😂 #writingq #WritingCommunity
December 14, 2025 at 11:02 AM
👇👇👇
Good to see that El Barto is alive and well in Limerick City...
December 13, 2025 at 3:31 PM
Good to see that El Barto is alive and well in Limerick City...
In terms of structure and pacing, this week's Pluribus is immensely satisfying.
December 13, 2025 at 12:04 PM
In terms of structure and pacing, this week's Pluribus is immensely satisfying.
Reposted by Val Nolan
Looks like we’ll have to make our own institutions. The ones that made us have been stolen, and gutted, and hollowed.
December 13, 2025 at 9:26 AM
Looks like we’ll have to make our own institutions. The ones that made us have been stolen, and gutted, and hollowed.
I have *finally* had a chance to fix my bicycle puncture. After putting it off for a month it inevitably it took 15min (this is always the case; I *know* this is always the case, and yet...). Had to pull the thorn out with a pliers though, yowza!
December 12, 2025 at 10:51 AM
I have *finally* had a chance to fix my bicycle puncture. After putting it off for a month it inevitably it took 15min (this is always the case; I *know* this is always the case, and yet...). Had to pull the thorn out with a pliers though, yowza!
Delighted to say that @tiffaniangus.bsky.social & I have submitted the manuscript for *Spec Fic for Newbies Vol. 3*! 😀 30 more explorations of subgenres & tropes from across SFF/H! We hope you'll join us in early 2026 for Terraformers, Swashbucklers, Fungal Horrors & more 😀 Trust us, it's a trip! 😂
December 12, 2025 at 10:48 AM
Delighted to say that @tiffaniangus.bsky.social & I have submitted the manuscript for *Spec Fic for Newbies Vol. 3*! 😀 30 more explorations of subgenres & tropes from across SFF/H! We hope you'll join us in early 2026 for Terraformers, Swashbucklers, Fungal Horrors & more 😀 Trust us, it's a trip! 😂
*This* 👇
My love for em dashes is as old as the hills and as mighty as my inability to make a transition between thoughts literally any other way and I will be damned if I let the clankers take that from me
December 10, 2025 at 12:12 PM
*This* 👇
Reposted by Val Nolan
Thread and replies well worth a read.
1) I was having drinks with @gregrucka.com who is in LA for VERY SECRET REASONS and we were discussing this post, because he had just finished A Thing and I am in the middle of A Thing and write all day, literally 9 to 5, and we were talking baout how THAT felt ...
I said it before, will say it again -- generative AI fetishizes "ideas" while sneering at effort, execution, and education. That, despite Gen-AI being built on and out of other people's effort, execution and education.
December 10, 2025 at 7:05 AM
Thread and replies well worth a read.
Reposted by Val Nolan
I'm always interested in other people's creative processes, in their own right and for those times when I come across something that reflects or illuminates my own. I may see something I try myself. It may or may not work for me. Regardless, I'll learn from trying.
1st, I note what I want in a story.
Then I write the comic as rough prose.
Then I change, add or omit, to fit the page count.
That's plotting.
Then I script: dividing scenes into panels, dialogue for each panel, before I draw.
While drawing, I still add/remove panels & make dozens of script tweaks.
Then I write the comic as rough prose.
Then I change, add or omit, to fit the page count.
That's plotting.
Then I script: dividing scenes into panels, dialogue for each panel, before I draw.
While drawing, I still add/remove panels & make dozens of script tweaks.
So you don't populate a plot or form characters to see what plot emerges from them as they form?
December 10, 2025 at 8:33 AM
I'm always interested in other people's creative processes, in their own right and for those times when I come across something that reflects or illuminates my own. I may see something I try myself. It may or may not work for me. Regardless, I'll learn from trying.