Alex

YouTube video by Andrea Bocelli Andrea Bocelli - Who Wants To Live Forever (with Brian May) - Live at “Teatro Del Silenzio” 2024

I'm not crying you're crying.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oygI...

Book cover: Women and Whitlam: Revisiting the Revolution, edited by Michelle Arrow (NewSouth Publishing, 2023).

On the 50th anniversary of the Dismissal, revisit the career and achievements of Elizabeth Reid, the world’s first advisor on women’s affairs advisor to Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, at #VIDAblog.

Read more here ⬇️
www.auswhn.com.au/blog/revisit...

Audio Erotica Is Having a Moment — A Romance Expert Reveals Why Listening Is So Sexy (Exclusive) "In romantic relationships, something just about everyone wants is to be truly heard," explains author and love and sex expert Jodi McAlister. In an exclusive essay for PEOPLE, the author of 'An Acade...

I've got an essay in People!! It's about the sexiness of listening, tying together some of my academic work on audio erotica with my new rom-com An Academic Affair.*

*out tomorrow in North America!! people.com/audio-erotic...

Whoa

And you too! Mine is surprisingly busy, mostly with good things.

Screenshot of the subscriber essays in Speculative Insight. Essay titles include The Empire of the Radch and the Injustice of Justice; Dispatches from Other Londons; War and Empire in Post Second World War Science Fiction.

Screenshot of the subscriber essays in Speculative Insight. Essay titles include Different Types of Strength, Should Galadriel have taken the Ring? Men Who Respect Witches IV

Screenshot of the subscriber essays in Speculative Insight. Essay titles include Reimagining Disability in YA Fantasy; Forensics for Fairytales; Untangling Quiet

Screenshot of the subscriber essays in Speculative Insight: Romantic Lead Balloons

And these are the subs-essays: more questions of representation and genre, more Pratchett and Tolkien and also Kingfisher; more empire; forensics in SFF, and Alan Moore's London.
(Subscribe for AUD30 to get access to all of them!)

Screenshot of the free essays in Speculative Insight. Essay titles include Almost a Witch, Lives under Empire, Towards a Taxonomy of Historical Science Fiction.

Screenshot of the free essays in Speculative Insight. Essay titles include Glass Geographies, Upwardly Mobile and Hating it, The Dublin Portal... or the Dublin Intrusion?

Screenshot of the free essays in Speculative Insight. Essay titles include In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future there are Only Warriors, What Lies and Threats, Celibacy & the Single Wizzard

Screenshot of the free essays in Speculative Insight. Essay titles include The SEA is Whose? and Families of the Future.

These are the free essays... there's questions of representation and genre, there's Pratchett, there's Tolkien, there's families, Warhammer, the Dublin Portal, and living in an empire...

Speculative Insight A journal for exploring the ideas and themes that stand behind, inform, and develop out of, speculative fiction.

So, awards season!

If you're thinking about nonfiction / related works, please do consider the essays that have appeared in Speculative Insight over 2025.

You can read 11 for free right now (a 12th coming in Dec), and there's another 10 (soon 11!) for subscribers...

www.speculativeinsight.com

Purple background, white text, which says Mrs Palm is an interesting Discworld character, as is the historical context her story references. Discworld's foremost witch, Granny Weatherwax, describes Mrs Palm as "almost a witch."

Freyja Stokes, a real-life #Pratchett scholar, looks at Mrs Palm and the historical connections between sex work and witchcraft... come for the history, stay for some amazing puns.

Read for free: www.speculativeinsight.com

Please share widely!

Escapist Routes #35

Escapist Routes time! This week I watched The Lowdown, The Morning Show, and Down Cemetery Road, and asking the question: is the overuse of composite scenes and body doubles in AppleTV shows something akin to a house style?

Wole Talabi has a new novel coming in October 2026 and it sounds terrific!

2025 Otherwise Award Recommendations « Otherwise Award Recommend works here for the Otherwise Award jurors to consider!

Reminder:

Please submit recommendations by Nov. 14th for the Otherwise Award jury to consider! Nominate works of speculative fiction - #sciencefiction, #fantasy, and more - that expand or explore our notions of gender:

otherwiseaward.org/award/2025-o...

New to the world of my A.G. Slatter Sourdough novels?

Y'all can taste test with No Good Deed - get the ebook for free or order the physical chapbook over at @brainjarpress 🙂

brainjarpress.com

The Project Saving Lives People The researchers behind the project. Sandy O’Sullivan Han Reardon-Smith Alana Blakers Prof Sandy O’Sullivan (Wiradjuri) Professor Sandy O’Sullivan (they/them) is a Wi…

All about the little team that did this work…or continue to do this work actually! Dr Han Reardon-Smith
-@cyberbanshee.bsky.social and Alana Blakers n me w/ support from Leandro Wallace and Dr Madi Day.

queer-as.org/the-project/

REVIEW: Between the White Key and the Black Key (2023) Jazz and crime have gone together in Japan ever since the musical genre was adopted by post-war teens to rebel against their more conservative parents. One of my favourite Japanese films is Kurahar…

Japanese jazz biopic Between the White Key and the Black Key does not quite manage to pull itself together, but the ambition in its structure is admirable.

fictionmachine.com/2025/11/07/r...

April next year!!

Honeyeater by Kathleen Jennings novel cover.

Oddities lurk in the corners. This town has a strangeness hiding in plain sight. The tension is, at times, heart racing. It is wrapped in mystery colder than late autumn fog. Built around a strange house harboring its own secrets, this is a story full of thorns and waterways infested with ghosts.🩸📚

Have you picked up THE COLD HOUSE by @angelaslatter.bsky.social yet? 💚

When Everly’s husband and daughter die in a car crash she finds out nothing is what she thought… Secrets and grief collide in this utterly compelling novella.

https://tinyurl.com/3zmsb6e7

Purple background, white text, which says Nanny, a typically candid and non-judgemental figure, is mortified to find out that her grandson suggested staying at this kind of establishment. She is then floored when Granny Weatherwax is unphased, knows exactly who Mrs Rosemary Palm is, and speaks of her with matter-of-fact respect. "Almost a Witch," Freyja Stokes

In which Granny Weatherwax is far more comfortable with Mrs Palm than Nanny... and Freyja Stokes explores the historical connections between witchcraft and sex work, as so beautifully explored by Terry Pratchett.

Read it now for free: www.speculativeinsight.com

Read an Excerpt From A Forest, Darkly by A.G. Slatter - Reactor A dark fantasy fairy tale of persecuted witches, snatched children, twisted magic, changelings, and the sins that bind…

"Maybe it’ll forget me.

Maybe something else will take its attention.

Maybe it’s time to run."

We're excited to share an excerpt from @angelaslatter.bsky.social's witchy new fantasy novel A Forest, Darkly!

:(

Yiiiikes. We had a lot of rain on the weekend but not that epic! Our weekend will be much more tame.

I need a word!

What’s the word for when your interest and focus is outward focused rather than inward? I can’t figure out how better to explain it so my googling is failing.

The cover of Song of Spores by Bogi Takács, with art by Galen Dara and design by Scott Gable. It has a strange organic spaceship-like creature in a sphere of... things, and the color scheme has a lot of blues, purples and oranges.

My brand new book Song of Spores is just $4.99 on the Kindle!

A fun space opera adventure that's also very trans, queer and intersex (like me). So um, *now* might be a good time to pick it up!

Spread the word! Costs less than an iced matcha latte 😆

amzn.to/47ES674 (Associate link)

I just wish we weren’t so far into the dystopia!

I just walked past a bus stop ad for Big Brother.

New Big Brother.

In 2025.

What. Even.

Purple background, white text, which says The history of sex work is not only one of marginalisation. It is also a history of real-world people who, like Rosemary Palm, work collectively with their communities and allies to push for improvements, protections, social change, and legal legitimacy. "Almost a Witch" -- Freyja Stokes

This excellent essay from Freyja Stokes examines the ways in which Terry Pratchett accurately portrays historical sex work in Europe, and its close connections to witchcraft.

Read it now! Tell your friends! www.speculativeinsight.com

Tony Abbott’s history of Australia wants us to be proud of men like him Tony Abbott begins his book Australia: A History, by telling off professional historians – and laments the “cultural confusion” of our present moment.

My review of former Australian PM Tony Abbott's new book out today: Tony Abbott’s history of Australia wants us to be proud of men like him theconversation.com/tony-abbotts...

This is a fascinating and well-crafted essay in Speculative Insight @speculativeinsight.bsky.social which covers the in-world implications of Tolkien’s nuanced approach to tribal warfare, colonialism and mythologising of the past.

I found it particularly relevant at the moment & a satisfying read

Purple background, white text, which says The history of sex work is not only one of marginalisation. It is also a history of real-world people who, like Rosemary Palm, work collectively with their communities and allies to push for improvements, protections, social change, and legal legitimacy. "Almost a Witch" -- Freyja Stokes

This excellent essay from Freyja Stokes examines the ways in which Terry Pratchett accurately portrays historical sex work in Europe, and its close connections to witchcraft.

Read it now! Tell your friends! www.speculativeinsight.com