"Anyone with perfect posture was faking it, overcompensating for entrenched trauma."

There was a time when JSTOR even sold merch: hats, mugs, and whatever else.

Did kids these days still know about CliffsNotes? When I say "It's like the Cliffsnotes version of X," should I be saying something like "It's like the AI summary version of X"?

This is such a huge problem: I'm googling a quotation to find a page number, and the AI overview confidently produces total nonsense that would mislead students and others. (This is of course a quotation from noted Jung distiller China Miéville speaking to the subject of "Marxism and Fantasy.")

It was possibly a mistake to assign the entire Tales of Nevèrÿon, because now I just want to spend the entire semester talking about the series.

(An advertisement I was served for a different, better way to cheat.)

What is going on in the world?

I would give a copy of this book to everyone in my neighborhood but I think they already hate us enough:

www.bloomsbury.com/us/lawn-9798...

Very cool!!

A new experience: an undergraduate sending me a request for an article I never wrote based off a fake AI citation.

Beautiful new medieval-themed issue of our UoM undergrad English Literature journal, with a foreword by me (doing my best to explain why medieval literature is worth studying): www.polyphonyjournal.com

After the brutal reality of dealing with student papers in the ChatGPT era finally hit me, here are a few tactics that I've found at least somewhat effective in getting students to do their own writing: 🧵

Classes are done: we're closing so many browser tabs today.

I still think it's funny that we both review the book quite positively, but you say that the discussion of Terry Brooks is one of your favorite parts of it, and in my review I say it's one of my least favorite...!

The latest issue of EXTRAPOLATION has a bunch of great reviews, including my review of Matthew Sanger's AN INTRODUCTION TO FANTASY.

Check it out (or, if you don't have access, DM me for a copy!).
www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/...

Can it be true that the audiobook of @alexpheby.bsky.social 's Mordew doesn't include the glossary? Unconscionable! I almost want to write a journal article on the glossary by itself.

Thanks to our contributors @grmorgan.bsky.social @timothysmiller.bsky.social @dretaylorpirie.bsky.social @nomad93.bsky.social @larsschmeink.bsky.social and many others. You can see the full table of contents here: edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-edi...

You have two weeks left to nominate books for the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction!

Nominations close March 31st.

Which books will join those shortlisted the last three years? (Yes, we fit them all in this picture.)

www.ursulakleguin.com/prize-nomina...

"...it was less that they were two separate people and more that they were a single person with two different ways of being in the world, each of which both knew."

As a consequence of my desire to avoid doomscrolling lately, I feel I've only really been using this site when I'm self-promoting. So, to counter that trend, here is an out-of-context passage from a novel, which is how I used to post in the good old days of social media...

Here is my own essay reflecting on teaching her interactive fiction The Road to Canterbury: escholarship.org/uc/item/1vv9... .

And you can play/read the thing itself here: www.choiceofgames.com/road-to-cant....

Thank you so much again! They really enjoyed it.

It also provided students with an important reminder that sometimes an author's response to "Why did you decide to do _________ this way?" has to be "You know, I can't remember."

My Chaucer course just had a lovely visit with author Kate Heartfield @kateheartfield.com. What better way to talk about interactive fiction than interacting with the author?