I’ve had the same editor since 1967. Many times he has said to me over the years or asked me, Why would you use a semicolon instead of a colon? And many times over the years I have said to him things like: I will never speak to you again. Forever. Goodbye. That is it. Thank you very much. And I leave. Then I read the piece and I think of his suggestions. I send him a telegram that says, OK, so you’re right. So what? Don’t ever mention this to me again. If you do, I will never speak to you again

Maya Angelou on the joys of being edited

Happy to beef on your behalf, send me your most scathing reply to your reviewer and I'll post it on Goodreads, Beef By Proxy

Ancillary Review of Books: Year 7! Questioning power, imagining possibility: ARB provides thoughtful criticism of speculative fiction. Help us pay our writers and staff!

Big news! ARB's first fundraiser is officially live! We're shooting for the very modest goal of $1k, with lots of stretch goals in mind. Your support is of course appreciated, and any help in spreading the word would be wonderful!

I really love the $1000 tier that says "ARB will work with you to figure out an appropriate gesture of appreciation for your contribution"

More Kickstarters should have a tier that's just "we'll owe you a favor"

"All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain"

this is a great book, everyone should buy it right now for 99 cents

as Dave Barry once said, "Decay, leading to ruination, is the inevitable fate of every human structure, Including your house. Your job, as a homeowner, is to stall the process as long as you can, knowing you will ultimately fail"

honestly this is the movie they should have made FIRST

simply have some kids and get them to do the chores!

(I cannot emphasize enough that this is a joke and WILL RESULT IN THE OPPOSITE EFFECT)

CHILDREN OF STRIFE BY @aptshadow.bsky.social IS OUT TODAY!

I'm only a few pages in but the collection of villains on this spaceship is already worth the cost of admission

I hope it's right next to "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" by Edmund Morris. I keep all my Pulitzer prize-winning biographies on the same shelf for maximum pretension

As a fan of both you and Matt Levine, I can verify that you both make extremely good jokes

Why Leonardo was a saboteur, Gutenberg went broke, and Florence was weird – Ada Palmer YouTube video by Dwarkesh Patel

This interview with @adapalmer.bsky.social was an incredible treat! Best podcast episode I've listened to in a while.

youtu.be/PAIhVfGbREA?...

I got a request recently from Oprah! I've been meaning to get back to her. Are you telling me it might not really be Oprah, and she's not going to recommend a niche SFF anthology to her millions of book club readers!?

I just finished "Slow Gods" by Claire North via a recommendation by @aptshadow.bsky.social, and I loved it.

Beyond the cultural richness of the far future setting, I think there's something very appealing about the juxtaposition of real-feeling technology set against an element of the numinous

I did this last year and I'm trying to make it an annual Thing, so here are a few short fiction writers in their first two years of publishing worth considering for Astounding Award nomination! I'm highlighting a work I loved from each of them (it's hard to keep it to just one, but c'est la vie)

🚨New episode ‼️

Brilliant author David Goodman @davegoodman.bsky.social takes us on a paratextual tour of Excession by Iain M Banks!

linktr.ee/stetpodcasts

Dave helps us understand why paratext is sometimes the best tool for conveying intricate relationships in a novel.

💙📚 #podcasts

My wife and I did the Mallory Cave hike above NCAR today, check out this section of "trail" that turned out to be a class 4 slab! I wouldn't have believed it was part of the trail if that plaque wasn't there. The view from the top was incredible.

A Meal of Thorns 43- DIASPORA with Eden Kupermintz Greg Egan’s work exemplifies a certain kind of “hard” science fiction: not that it’s obsessed with big manly space battles, but rather that it’s using science to reall…

Thoughtful conversation on @mealofthorns.bsky.social about Egan's Diaspora, I loved how they differentiated between the sort of superficial engineering projects+big guns pop culture hard SF and the mind-expanding concept-driven hard SF that Egan writes: ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2026/02/09/a...

😩

By the time I was two paragraphs in I was laughing so hard I had to take a break and go get a glass of water

The whole thing is heavily performance-art-coded, and seems like extremely funny satire to me. Unfortunately I suspect his main audience doesn't interpret it that way

As a 40 year old, I feel this in my bones.

The craziest feeling for me is going somewhere that I haven't been since I was a child. I lived in London ages 8-11, and a year ago I went back and visited some places I hadn't seen for thirty years. Time and experience utterly changed my perception.

I loved this one so much, I take extra damage from great stories about dogs

the only anthology that might pay you in silver coins

Calling all concept-driven science fiction short stories (and novelettes) published in 2025! I'm looking for bangers I might have missed that fit this brief: compellingsciencefiction.com/posts/call-f...

If you can share this with your favorite SF author/publisher/editor, I'd be grateful!

you got me shooksmaxxing

of Hugh Herr, the rock climber who lost his legs to frostbite after being trapped for 3 days in -20F temps, and who later became a leading biomechatronics researcher.

I love that the name Hugo is both evocative of Hugh and the Hugo awards (for which Okorafor's book will undoubtedly be a finalist)

I just finished "Death of the Author" by @nnedi.bsky.social, and I LOVED it.

This book had an utterly unique combination of technology, family, the confluence of Nigerian and American culture, and writing life.

As a rock climber, I really enjoyed the side character "Hugo", who reminded me strongly