Jo Walton

Cover of Trace Elements, coming out of the box

Spine

Cover held up

It's arrived, it's real, it's an actual book! @adapalmer.bsky.social Preorder now, in stores March 24th!

Book: King's Dragon (1997)
Series: Crown of Stars #1
Author: Kate Elliott

#BookSky #Books 💙📚👀 🪐📚 #bookskyES #KateElliott #CrownofStars

Both covers are good, but the second is one of the wildest covers i have ever seen. I love it!

It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

A small cluster of purple crocuses in bloom on the left side of the photo, amidst bright green grass and a few fallen brown leaves. In the background, blurry, additional greenery and fallen leaves.

Crocuses, sunlight.

Beautiful diagrams from a circa 17th-century copy of Muslim polymath Ismail al-Jazarī’s *Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices*, originally published in 1206: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/arabic-machine-manuscript

In 2026, colleges must teach students that this is not the end of the world. We must teach hope. Current undergraduates can barely remember a time before the threats of climate change and authoritarianism loomed to catastrophic scale. Since 2010, the future depicted in TV, books, and games has been dystopian or apocalyptic, so for our current students the end of the world feels more familiar and realistic than a future with hope. Now we are asking them to choose majors and life paths when the desirability, indeed the very existence, of whole sectors of employment are in question, due to the overwhelming promises of LLMs and machine learning. As young people hear daily that vocation after vocation may vanish into automation’s maw, and that democracy, liberty, land, sea, and sky are all in jeopardy, despair is growing. Despair is very emotionally tempting. It means freedom from the responsibility to shape the future. This is a terrifying turning point, but many generations before us have faced such turning points, and met them. We can offer our students perspective. Only a few dozen institutions on Earth are more than 900 years old, and the vast majority are universities. The university system is not a house of straw to buckle in this storm: We are the rocks that have sheltered the knowledge, hope, and truth through tumults which have toppled kingdoms while classrooms endured. We can endure this, and be a guiding light through it, but only by recentering, by teaching citizens, not workers; power, not PowerPoint; aspiration, not apocalypse. Despair is how we lose. The classroom is where we battle it. All other battles flow from here. Ada Palmer is an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago.

This, from Ada Palmer as part of The Chronicle's survey of 11 scholars on the future of higher ed, is what I needed to end the week.

A red glass tankard with pink and yellow peace roses, on a table with a fringed scarf, and behind, very 1970s wooden shelves with a green glass bottle, and behind that a painting with stripes.

#SomethingBeautiful another still life by my aunt, Mary Lace, Peace Roses.

This is such an insightful, multi-layered essay that I will be thinking about for a long time.

You should give it a read.

Bluesky's own @diane.dianeduane.com, they mean. 😄

“There's a sunrise and a sunset every single day, and they're absolutely free. Don't miss so many of them.”
– Jo Walton

#Paakantyi-Barkindji country

This is an excellent article about the value and purpose of genre fiction *and* it also neatly summarises how literary fiction works and what it doesn't address.

A fancy oval china bowl full of apples, on a countertop, and through the window the tops of railings and some houses across the street. The sky's grey. This is Cardiff. Of course the sky is grey.

#SomethingBeautiful another still life from my aunt Mary Lace, this one called Cardiff Fruitbowl -- it's the view from her kitchen.

Why All Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Are Historians SFF authors are the front-line practitioners who put the fruits of history’s craft into daily practice, sharing it in doses the public can consume, combining, treating, administering, customizing, …

Ooh! My new essay is up on Strange Horizons!
Deliberately provocative title 😈
strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

One month to wait for Trace Elements, a conversation on my favorite genres by the author of my favorite series @adapalmer.bsky.social and the person whose taste in books I admire the most @bluejo.bsky.social. I’ve not been that excited about a book for a very very long while

The Black Paradise Flycatcher aka Japanese Paradise Flycatcher (Terpsiphone atrocaudata) in Korea 🇰🇷

It is a migratory species, breeding in North Asia and migrating to Southeast.

Photography by Young Sung Bae (500px).
500px.com/p/ysbae491

#birds #nature #Photography

There probably is, but I don't have one. I can tell you that the personality of the cat is definitely real, from having known the cat.

An orange cat on a grey and white striped cushion with a black and pink brocade cushion behind, and a window through which you can see a garden shed and some vaguely green bits of garden. The cat is staring very seriously out of the picture, which was very characteristic of George.

#SomethingBeautiful a pet portrait of my Aunt Jane's cat George, by my aunt, Mary Lace

The eyes of a printed cat from the thread in more detail: you see a cross in the eyes.

Hypno-Cat says goodbye for today.

Amici italiani, ecco!

Just looked where the bookstore is, and it's fairly near my favourite gelateria in Rome, Giolitti. And I can get a train home to Florence at 21.48. Huzzah!

On the 12th! I can totally be there!

Meet the spirit animal for doubtfully and sceptic media consumption these days ...

I read one of his books and I was petrified.

#dailytree
#Zurich 🇨🇭

A weird looking "cat", thin and with babies on its back.

A 🧵 of 4-legged animals in sixteenth-century prints, including 🦊 🐕 🦒 🐈‍⬛ and a 🦄 . #skystorians

Grumpy looking black cat with yellow eyes, lying down, painting.

Hello Wednesday.
🖼️ Shozo Ozaki

Reclining boar with magnificent tusks in a snow-covered landscape

Ohara Koson

Pink flowers in a white jug against a cream drape (actually a duvet cover)

#SomethingBeautiful another still life from my aunt Mary Lace. One of the things that's fun for me in these is seeing household objects I've known all my life, like this jug, in a new light.

Just pre-ordered Trace Elements: Conversations on the Project of Science Fiction and Fantasy by Jo Walton (@bluejo.bsky.social) & @adapalmer.bsky.social. Used @bookshop.org, which let me support one of WI's independent bookstores to the tune of $9.60. Thx to you all!

#HumbleBrag 📚💙

The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For - Reactor In a corporate-run dystopia, a trans girl plucked out of poverty to give birth to a clone meets her replacement.

Brilliant but horrifying short by Cameron Reed @lateonsetgirl.bsky.social on @reactorsff.bsky.social reactormag.com/the-girl-tha...