@hararereview.com
✍🏾 Jacqueline Nyathi, librocubicularist, friendly neighbourhood "You *Must* Read This" person. https://hararereview.com 📝📚 @thecontinent.org, @strangehorizons.bsky.social etc (Incidentally, also @shonatiger.hararereview.com)
so much notionally Euro-medievalist fantasy bears a much closer relationship to the political, economic, and cultural systems of the Eastern Mediterranean of the Bronze and Iron Ages, in everything but onomastics and the climate of its setting, than it does to any part of medieval northwest Europe.
signs you may be thinking about the Egyptian New Kingdom or 8th-century BCE Assyria rather than the HRE:
polytheism
highly centralized palace economy
literate secular bureaucracy
large-scale infrastructure projects
imperial conquest + mass deportation/population control
institutionalized diplomacy
My mom likes my newsletter
![A "Grandiloquent Word of the Day" meme for the word “Periapt" with the pronunciation [PAIR-ee-apt]. The definition reads: “(n.) A charm or amulet worn as protection against mischief, misfortune, and disease.” An example sentence follows: “Young Peregrine wore a small brass periapt against illness, though, in the end, it proved regrettably ineffective against falling pianos.” To the right are eleven small engraved illustrations of ancient amulets and talismans with carved symbols, animals, and geometric designs, all rendered in a vintage black-ink style on an aged parchment background.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:uzkqphsznycugmyz7hqvna3f/bafkreih2jhsxmccg4jf5unp42pk3uzio3mgw6rnm4dsrtz74bvtzcgxn3u)
A "Grandiloquent Word of the Day" meme for the word “Periapt" with the pronunciation [PAIR-ee-apt]. The definition reads: “(n.) A charm or amulet worn as protection against mischief, misfortune, and disease.” An example sentence follows: “Young Peregrine wore a small brass periapt against illness, though, in the end, it proved regrettably ineffective against falling pianos.” To the right are eleven small engraved illustrations of ancient amulets and talismans with carved symbols, animals, and geometric designs, all rendered in a vintage black-ink style on an aged parchment background.
Periapt [PAIR-ee-apt]
(n.)
- A charm or amulet worn as protection against mischief, misfortune, and disease."
Used in a sentence:
“Young Peregrine wore a small brass periapt against illness, though, in the end, it proved regrettably ineffective against falling pianos.”
Updated the list of labour unions in SFF with a ton of new entries. (Many found by @joachimboaz.bsky.social)
Everything from 19th Century utopian works to reactionary tomes from the 1970s.
List as HTML: hugoclub.blogspot.com/2018/12/orga...
List as Spreadsheet: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
introduce yourself with 4 spaceships 🚀
introduce yourself with 4 spaceships 🚀
Welcome to Bluesky at last, Cory Doctorow! @doctorow.pluralistic.net
How a bill targeting trans literature could ban all LGBTQ+ books from American public schools (and why you should care).
A few hours remain to get the In Translation StoryBundle and support Global Voices Lingua! Get a fantastic selection of literature in translation, and support human translation at Lingua!
storybundle.com/translation
okay this prompt might start a fight but:
what is THEE sci-fi/fantasy/horror/romantasy book from the past year or two that makes you feel like, "oh my GOD you haven't read this yet?? you absolutely must read this immediately"?? like what's your pick for essential contemporary sffh reading
Barnes had a self-imposed 40-year ban on writing about people who went to Oxbridge and I wish he had kept it up. Unfortunately it expired before Departure(s).
4 book covers: - The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits x Ben Berman Ghan - Shards x Cynthia Marangwanda - Fire-Ready x Jane Rogers - The Utopia of Us edited by Teika Marija Smits
First purchases
A clean white library space across three floors.
The International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) is about to turn 100 ... so they're asking what the next 100 years hold for libraries and librarianship.
They're holding a short story competition (Judged by @maryrobinettekowal.com !!!!)
Details at the link: www.ifla.org/news/li-sci-...
Ad for a session. There is a black and teal gradient in the back. It reads AWP 2026 Conference How to Resist AI in Writing & Teaching Then three images: A femme with dark hair wearing a black blazer and a dark blouse, looking towards the camera, with an arm up on a table. Below it reads, Carmen Maria Machado. A black and white picture of a man with dark skin, slightly long black hair, and dark stubble. Below it reads, Umair Kazi. A brown trans woman with slightly longer black curly hair, wearing a black sweater, with her arms crossed. She is standing in front of a brick wall. Below it reads, Dr. Alex Hanna. A fourth picture is on the right: a woman with brown skin, shoulder-length black hair, is smiling and looking at the camera. She is wearing a chunky necklace and a black t-shirt. Below it reads, Moderated by Vauhini Vara. Below the images, it reads: Thursday, March 5, 12:10 PM. Room 310. Sponsored by The Author's Guild. The Author's Guild is represented by its logo.
Thursday @ AWP 2026! Join Carmen Maria Machado, Umair Kazi, @vauhinivara.bsky.social, and myself as we discuss how to Resist AI in Writing and Teaching. Sponsored by @authorsguild.org.
12:10 PM in Room 310. See you in Baltimore!
authorsguild.org/event/awp-20...
an image promoting a substack article titled ‘25 medieva manuscripts you can look at online right now’
i made a starter back of beautiful and unique manuscripts you can browse online! (with links) for anyone that wants a good way to spend an afternoon :)
open.substack.com/pub/weirdmed...
'Mussolini, he shouted suddenly, Mussolini is the dog who's the reason why decent lovers of football can't travel to Italy anymore.'
- Karl-Markus Gauß,IN THE FOREST OF THE METROPOLES, tr. Tess Lewis
Tentatively embracing Kobo
A few months after the death of our teenage daughter, we left her -- as we thought -- safely buried in St Anne's churchyard, Barnes, and bought a house in Peckham.
M John Harrison winning the opening sentence.
because I keep forgetting to mention it: LITERALLY ANYONE can nominate books for this prize! yes! that means you! you have until march 31st!
Harare Review of Books, Issue 1, 2026 open.substack.com/pub/shonatig...
good morning! new from me in @strangehorizons.bsky.social today, a review of Alexandra McCollum's Into the Midnight Wood, in which I vent some frustrations with the current state of the cozy romcom fantasy novel
(I liked this one tho!)
The old world is dying very noisily
Congratulations!
Delighted to learn that my new book, The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide, has been named as a finalist for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Prize. www.anisfield-wolf.org/2026/03/anis... (A radio segment follows below.)
NEW: Wikipedia editors have implemented new policies and restricted a number of contributors who were paid to use AI to translate existing Wikipedia articles into other languages after they discovered these AI translations added AI “hallucinations,” or errors, to the resulting article.
Harare Review of Books, Issue 1, 2026 open.substack.com/pub/shonatig...
So bsky had a bit of a menty b earlier yeah?
I’m holding my copy of MYTHOPEDIA by Adrienne Mayor
If you love myths and love reading about the natural world, I highly recommend MYTHOPEDIA by Adrienne Mayor. Organized A to Z, it explores natural phenomena all over the world and related the myths and folklore.
