Paul McAuley
@unlikelyworlds.bsky.social
3.6K followers 290 following 900 posts
Scribble scribble scribble Latest novel: Beyond the Burn Line Incoming (12th Feb 2026): Loss Protocol Working on: Heaven's Grand Design Website: https://www.unlikelyworlds.co.uk Agent: Oliver Cheetham at Mic Cheetham Agency
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Reposted by Paul McAuley
spectrum.ieee.org
Researchers have found a way to get close-up images of nearby #stars and #exoplanets within 25 years. These new probes would be tiny disks with optical sensors, accelerated into space by lasers, travelling at 0.2 times the speed of light. spectrum.ieee.org/high-speed-i...
Reposted by Paul McAuley
Reposted by Paul McAuley
coreyspowell.bsky.social
Amazing: Comet ATLAS formed some 8 billion years ago. It made about 3 dozen circuits around our galaxy. It entered our our solar system & just passed 30 million kilometers from Mars...

...where ESA's ExoMars orbiter captured these images of the interstellar comet! 🧪🔭

www.esa.int/Science_Expl...
Reposted by Paul McAuley
richardkadrey.bsky.social
My new book, THE FLESH KING is out today and available everywhere your get your books. But I’d feel like an ass if I didn’t mention new books by two of my favorite writers: THE ESSENTIAL HORROR OF JOE R. LANSDALE and SHADOW TICKET by Thomas Pynchon. Why not go nuts and get all three?
THE FLESH KING by me! THE ESSENTIAL HORROR OF JOE R. LANSDALE SHADOW TICKET by Thomas Pynchon
Reposted by Paul McAuley
spahn711.bsky.social
Just found this image of the 2021 Fagradalsfjall eruption in Iceland that I've never shared before. Being in the presence of this volcano and feeling the intense heat of the Earth on my skin was genuinely the best experience of my life and its not even close. #photography
An erupting volcano. A black spatter cone with a gap in the front has lava fountaining out, hundreds of feet into the air, smacking against the cone, and flowing along a snaking lava river toward the camera. A plume of gas rises into the air with mostly cloudy sky in the background.
Reposted by Paul McAuley
andybrockman.bsky.social
Everybody makes money out of academic authors except the authors...News.

Wiley is the latest academic publisher to reach a multi-million deal to allow access to its content to AI developers, with no opt out, let alone payment, for the authors who created that content.
Wiley set to earn $44m from AI rights deals, confirms “no opt-out" for authors
The US publisher is the latest to capitalise on deals to give tech firms access to its authors’ content to train their Large Language Models (LLMs).
www.thebookseller.com
Reposted by Paul McAuley
gillyarcht.bsky.social
OMG
donmoyn.bsky.social
Royal Portuguese Cabinet of Reading, Rio de Janeiro
Very ornate library with beautiful glass ceiling
Reposted by Paul McAuley
pfbvan.bsky.social
Pleased to discover this one back in print, & at a very reasonable price point, too.

"[L]ike its predecessors, a near-faultless technical performance...[plus] 2 new items to the Beauman repertoire: relative structural simplicity and profound emotional resonance."
Reposted by Paul McAuley
bowiesongs.bsky.social
10 years ago today (yikes): the first taste of "Blackstar," in a trailer for The Last Panthers (and a great fake-out by DB, making everyone assume the song would be another "Heat"): www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6J4...
The Last Panthers | Opening Credits with new music from David Bowie
YouTube video by Sky TV
www.youtube.com
Reposted by Paul McAuley
adapalmer.bsky.social
Puffins return to Maine after half a century of absence. Eastern Egg Rock now hosts the only puffin colony in the United States, restored through decades of painstaking work after the birds were hunted out a century ago. buff.ly/RB0Ibz0
#ShareGoodNewsToo
How researchers restored a thriving habitat for Atlantic puffins in Maine
Atlantic puffins face an increasingly precarious foothold due in part to a loss of habitat and to troubles tied to warming ocean waters and climate change. But an effort off the coast of Maine…
buff.ly
Reposted by Paul McAuley
Reposted by Paul McAuley
tomasjmurray.bsky.social
Today is Brian O’Nolan’s (aka Flann O’Brien, Myles na gCopaleen et al) birthday.
With John Ryan, Anthony Cronin, Patrick Kavanagh & Tom Joyce (Bloomsday, Sandymount, 1954)
Reposted by Paul McAuley
folklorewales.com
Six weeks ago, I picked up a year-old tawny owl with a broken leg off the main road near our home and dropped him off at our nearest vet.

After a few days, I received one of the most bizarre phone calls I’ve ever had, asking “So when are you coming to pick up your owl?” 🧵
Tawny owl
Reposted by Paul McAuley
oxinabox.bsky.social
as a girl with a PhD in natural language processing and machine learning it's actually offensive to me when you say "we don't know how LLMs work so they might be conscious"

I didn't spend 10 years in mines of academia to be told ignorance is morally equal knowledge.

We know exactly how LLMs work.
Reposted by Paul McAuley
joncg.bsky.social
It's the best thing Sam's written. I would say that, it just happens to be true...
:-)
theothersambaker.bsky.social
A wise woman once told me terror was the flip side of exhilaration. She’s not wrong!
Reposted by Paul McAuley
terumbudivers.com
Shrimp on a Bubble coral
#gili #giliislands #lombok #diving #scuba #giliair #pets #ocean #sealife #marinelife #shrimp #padi #bubble #coral
Reposted by Paul McAuley
shakethescales.bsky.social
It would take around 1.1 million acres of solar panels to (clean) power the world. That's less than a quarter of the number of acres devoted globally to golf courses. You can see where this is going, right...?
Reposted by Paul McAuley
gammacounter.bsky.social
Watch today is a Soviet-made handwound “medical watch” from 1989 by Slava. The scales help you determine the patient’s heart rate. You must wait until the seconds hand reaches 0 or 30, then count 15 patient pulses. Where the seconds hand is on the scale at that moment is the heart rate.
Reposted by Paul McAuley
mikeachim.bsky.social
HE PAINTED OVER A HUNDRED OF THESE

okay okay. get it together, Mike.
Photorealistic riverbank painting by Peder Mørk Mønsted Photorealistic snowy track through woods painting by Peder Mørk Mønsted
Reposted by Paul McAuley
jwomack.bsky.social
Tell me about it.
hatkidsays.bsky.social
I hate that dystopian fiction ended up having the most accurate take on the future
Reposted by Paul McAuley
cinephiliabeyond.org
Bilge Ebiri asks Jim Jarmusch a question we've always wondered about when it comes to indie filmmakers: “How do you pay the bills?”