Simon Spanton

A photo of a golden roan working cocker-spaniel asleep on a bed with his paws out in front of him.

Goodnight.

Exactly. His walks are his art in the main and that's something which is entirely personal and private - the evidence of them in the book is necessarily scant. It's a fascinating and enticing conumdrum. So odd for it even to have become a thing for others.

Walk The Line is a book with b&w photographs and descriptions of his landscape walks and colour photos of his stone sculptures and mud abstracts. His walks are odd and vast endeavours with exact and bizarre rationales. He COMMITS. Book is amazing but also kind of frustrating as it can only hint.

A photo of the CD jewel case for the self-titled debut album by Dire Straits.

Clearing up after tea music.

We just have to hope that it's not always Tuesday.

Austin Princess
Samsung Heatpump

Where does he keep his football shirts?

Their twisted vision of glory is so blinding it blanks out any self-reflection.

I am 60 and I have seen some things but I did NOT imagine I would live through my country suffering a complete mental breakdown.

Goldsworthy and Richard Long are heroes to me.

Chroma is lovely too - a slim book ot meditations on the history and use of colour in art and film

LOVED that exhibition. The hare paintings! The fern snake! The photographs!

I'm pretty sure this is a scene from @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social's Southern Reach trilogy.

A photo of a proof copy of the 2025 Angry Robot edition of Project Hanuman by Stewart Hotston.

"The ship watched its pilot leave with the Interlocutor and wept.
Its tears weren't salty or wet but full of electrical charge and potential states of being. Its sorrow screeched out across the dead network of Sirajah's Reach searching for anyone to answer..."

@stewarthotston.com

Modern Nature is my favourite. Smiling in Slow Motion is wonderful but is a harder read as his health becomes increasingly bad over the course of it and he is not one to hide the truth of this from his readers. There is a resilience there but his pain and the pain of those around him is distressing.

Never imagined I would live through this country having an actual mental breakdown.

"The ssssentence isssss DEATTHHHHHHH!"

A photo of an access panel in a white tiled wall. A yellow stripe above. Red and white hazard stripes below. A blue stripe to the right.

Portal number 173.

Kate Bush's video legacy in safe hands.

The "how dare lawyers defend people I don't like and who are definitely guilty of what I think they are guilty of" bit was especially level-headed...

Oh good work!

Show them the Mervyn Peake illustrations - guaranteed nightmares.

An essential but extremely hard watch.

A photo of a copy of the 1992 Gollancz edition of Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner. The cover art is by Michael Posen.

"The beauties, the antlered, the winged ones, all awash in their sea of blue light...I thought, God help me, seven years of this, and this the first night...I tried to think of Meg and Gavin, but the blue light came between me and my image of their hearth fire, and blurred the sun on the hillside."

You did a good thing. Respect is due.

Often end up using the nearest paperback to hand for a tea or coffee cup. I am a very bad person.

(But I understand that this is not a complete solution. Even I, monster that I am wouldn't use them at the dinner table for drinks.)

A photo of a copy of the 2014 Gollancz edition of Ombria in Shadow by Patricia McKillip. The cover art, a fantastical city, is by iamgabz.

"Shedding centuries again, she slipped an arm through Camas's, and accommodated herself, like one of her own ghosts, to his blistered hobble along the river, while Ducon, betrayed by his own spellbound bones, trailed helplessly in her wake."

Umm...

You look very focused.

A photo of copies of The Red Planet by Simon Morden, It's the End of the World by Adam Roberts and The Secret Life of Fungi by Aliya Whiteley

I have, in my time, asked SF writers to write non-fiction. The results have been, without exception, both brilliant and entertaining.

It's almost as if excellent SF writers are excellent writers full stop.

Aliya Whiteley
@adamroberts.bsky.social
@comrademorden.bsky.social