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Wesley Osam @mwosam.bsky.social · 1d

This kind of pacing has bothered me for ages; I just checked and it looks like I first complained about it on my blog nearly a decade ago: www.superdoomedplanet.com/blog/2016/04...

Action and Time | Recurring Bafflement

www.superdoomedplanet.com

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Jake Casella Brookins @casella.bsky.social · 1d

I've been seeing a lot of this even in books that seem like they should be more driven, pulpier, more plot & action-focused. What frustrates me about it—to be clear, I adore a contemplative lost-in-the-landscape literary meander—is when it seems to stem from a televisual concept of *time*.

The Girl with the Green Ribbon 💀💀 (Jenny Hamilton) @readingtheend.bsky.social · 1d

I'm seeing a lot of this in the romantasy space! there are books with minimal story apart from the romance, so you end up with an iterative structure where the leads go to a series of locations or make a series of small advances on their MacGuffin quest, as set dressing for their escalating intimacy

Mythcreants @mythcreants.bsky.social · 2d

A new thing we’re noticing is books where way less happens than you’d expect for their length because of worldbuilding info dumps or long scenes of explaining plans. You get through a 100,000 word novel and realize the whole story was spent picking up magic groceries.

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Wesley Osam @mwosam.bsky.social · 3d

At the #comics site: Things Your Grandparents Knew

www.superdoomedplanet.com/comic/?p=1636

Things Your Grandparents Knew

Visit the post for more.

www.superdoomedplanet.com

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Ancillary Review of Books @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org · 8d

End of the month, and that means: the link round-up is upon us! Some cool reviews, some great interviews, and some insightful essays from around the web:
ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2025/09/29/w...

Wow! Signal: September 2025

Jake Casella Brookins The Ancillary Review of Books was founded to address the radical possibilities of criticism, particularly in the context of the radical possibilities of speculative fiction. N…

ancillaryreviewofbooks.org

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Wesley Osam @mwosam.bsky.social · 9d

This morning I randomly remembered the time Lipton tried to appeal to the anxious masculinity market with the slogan "This ain't no sippin' tea."

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Dr. Hilary Agro, PhD 🍄 @hilaryagro.com · 10d

As an anti-capitalist content creator we are always begging people to share and talk about our work but the dunking/outrage ecosystem is like a bulldozer driven by a geared up gym bro. We've gotta figure out ways to have discourse around interesting ideas too, not just bad ones

Liz Ryerson @ellaguro.bsky.social · 10d

it really burns me that everyone knows the name of guys like Ezra Klein and are constantly talking about them (even if it's in the negative sense) vs. someone like Kaleb Horton. sometimes it feels as if broad name recognition in this era is inversely related to how good your work is.

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Tegan O’Neil @teganoneil5000.bsky.social · 10d

was S01 strange? hell yeah. some of the spiciest shit Roddenberry ever thunk up, and a couple of real clunkers in that line-up. they were right to smooth out some of those kinks … but Star Trek has to have some of that weirdness to work. that’s the Great Bird’s truest legacy, we forget at our peril.

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Tegan O’Neil @teganoneil5000.bsky.social · 10d

these guys are so familiar and domesticated now, it seems hard to properly convey just how weird this pilot was, a different world filled with bizarre shit making no real attempt to color within the lines of the still very popular movies … like a weird day-glo bomb set off right in the living room.

The Spaceshipper 🚀 @thespaceshipper.com · 10d

Star Trek: The Next Generation started 38 years ago today.

The future began again at this (Encounter at Far)point.

Newspaper advertisement for the U.S. premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Specifically, this ad was for its broadcast on the New York station WPIX on the week of its debut. The headline, "TONIGHT, THE 24TH CENTURY BEGINS WITH A SPECTACULAR TWO-HOUR MOVIE," refers to the series' double-length pilot episode, "Encounter at Farpoint."

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Wesley Osam @mwosam.bsky.social · 10d

At the comic site: Behold, a Snail Horse

www.superdoomedplanet.com/comic/?p=1632

Behold a Snail Horse

Visit the post for more.

www.superdoomedplanet.com

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Wesley Osam @mwosam.bsky.social · 14d

Re-upping this once for the morning. Specifically, it's part two of a post on stories that got both a Hugo and a Nebula nomination in 1974, which turned out to be a surprisingly thematically unified bunch.

Wesley Osam @mwosam.bsky.social · 14d

I've finally gotten around to finishing part two of a long blog post on the science fiction awards of 1974:

www.superdoomedplanet.com/blog/2025/09...

Science Fiction Awards in 1974, Part 2 | Recurring Bafflement

www.superdoomedplanet.com

Wesley Osam @mwosam.bsky.social · 14d

I've finally gotten around to finishing part two of a long blog post on the science fiction awards of 1974:

www.superdoomedplanet.com/blog/2025/09...

Science Fiction Awards in 1974, Part 2 | Recurring Bafflement

www.superdoomedplanet.com

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Wesley Osam @mwosam.bsky.social · 28d

Still in shock over the Walter Tevis covers in this vein:

Wesley Osam @mwosam.bsky.social · Sep 4

So this is apparently the actual cover for the current ebook version of Walter Tevis' The Man Who Fell to Earth.

Little green cartoon alien literally falling to earth

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The Ken in Yellow @kenlowery.bsky.social · Sep 7

one of my presiding theories of the internet is WAY too many people want to be The Next Person Who Coined 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl,' like a snarky dismissive phrase they can own. Genre writers especially prone to this. Rarely seen a guy state that intent so plainly, though

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Wesley Osam @mwosam.bsky.social · Sep 7

I'm completely serious about this: I challenge any SFF fan who wants to complain about litfic to name specific books and make specific criticisms.

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Wesley Osam @mwosam.bsky.social · Sep 7

SFF fans constantly complain about Sad Boner Professor books, but never actually name any. Surely if this is such an enduring and popular strand of litfic they should be able to name a few recent, non-obscure examples.

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Roseanna Pendlebury @chloroformtea.bsky.social · Sep 7

Ah yes, this important trope we need to discuss that… hasn’t been major/current/dominant/relevant in the whole time I’ve been reading litfic. Begging people once again to read the genre as it currently is before making sweeping statements.

Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · Sep 7

I want to popularize a term of art for this particular litfic genre trope: the Sad Boner Professor.

It's a novel about a Professor (usually of American Literature). He is Sad. Also, he has a Boner. His boner is inordinately interested in the sexy, sexy student: also, he's sad because: wife.

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Renay⁷ @renay.bsky.social · Sep 7

every time the "litfic is bad because it's all about professors and their boners" discourse arises like a shambling zombie, I wonder what these people are reading. every lit fic novel I pick up is like "a WOMAN goes on a MADCAP adventure featuring SENTIENT MUSHROOMS and a masters thesis!"

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violent alien @blipstress.bsky.social · Sep 7

"Hero sleeps with younger female subordinate" is a much, much more popular and robust tradition in SFF than "Professor sleeps with student" ever was in litfic, and yet people only complain about the latter. I do wonder why.

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Sexy Andrew Hickey Costume @andrewhickey.500songs.com · Sep 6

Seeing someone saying there was no SF cinema made between 2001 and Star Wars. Logan's Run, Soylent Green, Silent Running, Zardoz, The Omega Man, Sleeper, Westworld, Dark Star, a bunch of Doug McClure films, and four Planet of the Apes sequels would like a word.

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Wesley Osam @mwosam.bsky.social · Sep 6

The key is that instead of writing an actual paragraph I write what the paragraph is supposed to be doing, functionally.

It doesn't solve the problem of finding the right words to express my meaning, but means I'm not writing first and only then trying to work out what I meant.

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Wesley Osam @mwosam.bsky.social · Sep 6

Working again on the second half of the blog post on 1974 SF awards, and I think I finally figured out how to write a complete crappy first draft instead of spending countless hours writing and rewriting the same few sentences at a time.

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Hagai Palevsky (he/him) @dialhforhagai.bsky.social · Oct 18

Herriman

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Rachel Deering @racheldeering.bsky.social · Sep 4

Goodnight.
🖼️ Cats of the Louvre, Matsumoto Taiyo.

The image is an illustration from Taiyo Matsumoto's graphic novel, Cats of the Louvre. It depicts a nocturnal scene featuring several cats in motion, running in front of the iconic Louvre Museum in Paris, which is illuminated under a full moon.

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Wesley Osam @mwosam.bsky.social · Sep 4

It doesn't matter if DC, Marvel, and Image have systems set up to create new work if all of that work is expensive, only sold in weird specialty stores, and has the same trashy nerd aesthetic/storytelling style as the superhero comics.

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Wesley Osam @mwosam.bsky.social · Sep 4

Manga are more widely read than DC/Marvel/Image comics for the same reason newspaper comics, for most of the 20th century, were more widely read than those comics. They're cheaper, easier to get, more varied in subject matter, and not embarrassing to be seen reading.

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