Zach's avatar

Zach

@megapolisomancy.bsky.social

560 followers 761 following 1323 posts

Reviews of weird fiction at, among other places, Seize the Press, Strange Horizons, Interzone, and Ancillary Review of Books, where I am also an editor. Also jazz, metal, leftism.

Zach's avatar Zach @megapolisomancy.bsky.social
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Only in New York, baby (do people walk at the correct speed on sidewalks built for walking at the correct speed)

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Jake Casella Brookins's avatar Jake Casella Brookins @casella.bsky.social
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NYC, thank you for being one of the few places where my preferred pedestrian pace is acceptable (a near-sprint)

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Zach's avatar Zach @megapolisomancy.bsky.social
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If I had any graphic design skills I'd make a Bourdieu-style chart with all of these looping back through and around one another

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Zach's avatar Zach @megapolisomancy.bsky.social
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Horror is an affect, inward, incumbent in the body; weird is an ontology, outward, incumbent in the world

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Zach's avatar Zach @megapolisomancy.bsky.social
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I'm hereby calling for a national general strike until someone publishes new work from Kai Ashante Wilson. It can be a collection, a novel, or a new novella, I'm not picky.

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Zach's avatar Zach @megapolisomancy.bsky.social
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So, that said, off the top of my head: all of the core works of the New Weird (Mieville, VanderMeer, Ford's trilogy, The Etched City, Swainston, etc), Kai Ashante Wilson's novellas, Valente's Orphan's Tales maybe, Peter Watts or Alastair Reynolds for SF? Both of Vajra's novels. Gideon the Ninth

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Zach's avatar Zach @megapolisomancy.bsky.social
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Excellent question! On the one hand I think horror and the weird are fairly inseparable, but you can definitely have weird works homed in other genres with gestures toward horror, especially if you think of it more as unsettlement and less as a necessity to scare

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Amal El-Mohtar's avatar Amal El-Mohtar @amalelmohtar.com
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imo there is no being late to this party, there is only keeping the door open to get more people in until we've taken over the block for a week

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Zach's avatar Zach @megapolisomancy.bsky.social
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Don’t tell anyone I said so but it turns out you can just fake your way through that

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Seán Padraic Birnie's avatar Seán Padraic Birnie @seanbirnie.bsky.social
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Zach Gillan's reviews are always essential reading. This sounds incredible.

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Seize The Press Magazine's avatar Seize The Press Magazine @seizethepress.bsky.social
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"The weight of history bearing down on the reader is remarkably tangible and all-encompassing, a sense of darkness cloaking the distant neon lights of twenty-first century cyberpunk."

@megapolisomancy.bsky.social's latest review, YOU GLOW IN THE DARK by Liliana Colanzi.

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Zach's avatar Zach @megapolisomancy.bsky.social
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Over at Strange Horizons, Miles Davis, Robert Aickman, and Brian Evenson walk into a bar…

Or,

I went long on the fantastic anthology MOONCALVES (ed @basicchunnel.bsky.social) and laid out my thinking on the beauties of weird fiction, open space, and unsettlement.

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Zach's avatar Zach @megapolisomancy.bsky.social
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And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the corruption of hearts and minds

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a.a. de levine's avatar a.a. de levine @aadelevine.bsky.social
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when i say i'm "rockin' out," i mean in the sisyphean sense.

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Zach's avatar Zach @megapolisomancy.bsky.social
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It is indeed; I'm having a shirt printed with choice pull quotes from the essay for him to wear while he goes toe to toe with VanderMeer

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Zach's avatar Zach @megapolisomancy.bsky.social
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Not sure how to feel about the fact that there are not one but two panels at Necronomicon this year that seem awfully similar to essays I wrote last year

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Zach's avatar Zach @megapolisomancy.bsky.social
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One of my #1 guys, although I somehow haven't gotten to An Evil Guest yet (the "somehow" is the crushing number of books in the world and crushingly low number of hours in the day)

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Thomas Ha's avatar Thomas Ha @thomasha.bsky.social
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he just leaves these posts out like honey for weird fic fly people to hover around

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Zach's avatar Zach @megapolisomancy.bsky.social
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Yeah, alright, I’ll give you direct descendent - I was reacting against discourse/definitions that treat it as unmediated inspiration/duplication.

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Zach's avatar Zach @megapolisomancy.bsky.social
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What if some brave person were to argue that what we call "weird fiction" today is a result of horror incorporating SF's New Wave into itself (or... vice versa?) and has little to do with HP Lovecraft, Cthulhu, or tentacles

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Zach's avatar Zach @megapolisomancy.bsky.social
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and then you add horror to the mix and you've got a weird fiction stew going

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Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein's avatar Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein @deepcuts.bsky.social
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Head's in a negative space today, so let's switch it up and go positive. Top ten cosmic horror/Lovecraftian stories since 2020 you should read, a thread. I'll give mine, chime in with yours.

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Zach's avatar Zach @megapolisomancy.bsky.social
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Oh, not trying to pretend the roots aren't there... I'd say HPL is integral and foundational to the horror side of that equation; more arguing that something produced as a mythos derivative in more recent decades would have to also incorporate NW to be successful weird fiction, maybe

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Zach's avatar Zach @megapolisomancy.bsky.social
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No, but it sounds familiar... is it in The Starry Wisdom? I have a copy of that lying around somewhere

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Zach's avatar Zach @megapolisomancy.bsky.social
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What if some brave person were to argue that what we call "weird fiction" today is a result of horror incorporating SF's New Wave into itself (or... vice versa?) and has little to do with HP Lovecraft, Cthulhu, or tentacles

5 replies 4 reposts 14 likes

Zach's avatar Zach @megapolisomancy.bsky.social
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His intro to one of the Fontana anthologies, let me see if I can track it back down

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Zach's avatar Zach @megapolisomancy.bsky.social
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Agreed - always possible to put it to good use (consistent political project, right!), but there’s a very important means-vs-end spectrum

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