It's odd how many first year students have never been warned to click on every email link to see which are legit and which are malicious.

Find Me Where It Ends by Cassandra Khaw To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/over-...

Over With Quick

Cassandra Khaw’s 2026 Find Me Where It Ends is an upcoming fantasy novella of existential despair. Antigone’s family has a rare gift. Or perhaps it is a curse. Impending death appears to them as a dog...

jamesdavisnicoll.com

i appreciate it! i’ve reissued the novels with new covers, new printing, if you’re interested 🙏🏼

Claremont should have introduced more unresolved plot threads.

Asher Elbein@asherelbein.bsky.social · yesterday

Okay, I'm genuinely throwing this out to people: what are your mildly shit-stirring takes on X-Men comics and characters?

Jean Grey has been unconsciously mind-controlling people to fall for her since before her first appearance. If it wasn't for that, she'd have a dozen would-be beaus, tops.

Asher Elbein@asherelbein.bsky.social · 2d ago

Anyway, that's bedtime! Maybe I'll think of more tomorrow. In the meantime, feel free to hit me with some of your spicier X-men takes below

This is very weird: I steam cleaned a carpet in a room that has a dehumidier. The carpet is definitely still damp... but the measured humidity went down, not up.

Apparently, it's not enough to boil water now. I have to actually make and drink the coffee.

The Curve of the World by Vonda N. McIntyre Ethical adoption practices compel circumnavigating the Earth. The pirates are an unwanted extra. jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/the-p...

The Place I Belong

Vonda N. McIntyre’s 2026 The Curve of the World is an alternate-history novel. One thousand years after Knossos was warned of an impending tsunami in time to save the inhabitants, the descendants of t...

jamesdavisnicoll.com

What the heck is going on in the first week of November that I know so many people born in mid-August? Are they late Halloween babies or early Yanksgiving?

Tony Stark became a superhero? How ironic.

If Bluesky was really a happening place, wouldn't its members have collectively invented cold fusion by now?

Bundle of Holding: NPC Portrait Decks 13 human-created print-and-cut .PDF decks of system-neutral, ready-to-run NPC personalities from Inkwell Ideas. bundleofholding.com/presents/NPC...

Inkwell NPC Deck Bundle

Gamemaster! As the player characters in your tabletop roleplaying game explore your campaign world, they meet your setting's nonplayer characters (NPCs) – threats, rivals, and potential allies. This a...

bundleofholding.com

If I had a billion dollars, I'd bribe Waterloo Region to make every street one-way, to add at least three more King-Weber intersections, rebuild the Hiway Market, and relegalize blue whale ownership in W'loo.

A moment of silence for the Conestoga College student who asked me for transit advice yesterday. I forgot to wear my placard warning people not to do that unless they have a lot of time to spare. (On the plus side, she knows a lot more about how passes work, not to mention route optimization)

A Plagued Sea by Kim Bo-Young (Translated by Sophie Bowman) Mu-young's outing with her beloved niece Hyun leads to loss, revelation, and horror. jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/in-th...

In Their Eyes

Kim Bo-Young’s 2020 A Plagued Sea is a stand-alone horror novella. The 2026 English translation is by Sophie Bowman. Despite the crowds, professional Mu-young and her beloved niece Hyun manage to make...

jamesdavisnicoll.com

"The dark beans are particularly good," said the preacher of the black legume.

Five SFF Stories Featuring Highly Intelligent Animals Mutant mice, a witch's feline companion, a raccoon detective, and more... reactormag.com/five-sff-sto...

Five SFF Stories Featuring Highly Intelligent Animals - Reactor

Mutant mice, a witch's feline companion, a raccoon detective, and more...

reactormag.com

Computer models led by Dr. Orkan Umurhan, senior research scientist at the SETI Institute, show that nitrogen ice at the base of Pluto’s kilometers-deep Sputnik glacier can melt, forming liquid nitrogen. Learn more: www.swri.org/newsroom/pre...

SwRI study finds evidence of liquid recently flowing on Pluto’s surface | Southwest Research Institute

Researchers use New Horizons imagery to identify evidence for liquid nitrogen flowing from underneath Pluto’s famous heart-shaped glacier

swri.org

A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck Soren Johansson dies age forty-five and wakes to find the afterlife waiting for him... just as soon as he completes one small library-related task. jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/bee-i...

Bee Inside A Jar

Steven L. Peck‘s 2012 A Short Stay in Hell is a stand-alone Borgesian horror novella. Soren Johansson died of brain cancer at age forty-five, leaving a widow and four orphans. A devout Mormon, he had ...

jamesdavisnicoll.com

I don't know that I could relate to being a glasses-wearing, bearded nerd who is surprising hard to fatally injure.

Micky D@mickyde.bsky.social · 6d ago

By jumping in and catching a horrifying disease. Is this a trick question?

Canada Healthwatch 🍁@canadahealthwatch.ca · 4d ago

Going to the beach? Here's how you can tell if there's harmful bacteria in the water: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/... by Jessica Singer. Find out more at canadahealthwatch.ca

Bundle of Holding: Frontier Scum Ebooks for Frontier Scum, the rules-lite Acid Western tabletop roleplaying game from Games Omnivorous about helter-skelter gunfights in guttermucked streets, with death following 2d6 days later. bundleofholding.com/presents/Fro...

Frontier Scum Bundle

Outlaw! This all-new Frontier Scum Bundle presents .PDF ebooks of Frontier Scum, the rules-lite Acid Western tabletop roleplaying game from Games Omnivorous about helter-skelter gunfights in guttermuc...

bundleofholding.com

I have a dire need of spec fic novellas, in particular by persons of colour. Recommendations, please.

Ethical question from a few years back: you are a superhero. You stumble over a villain's secret ID. However, he is the lead tenor in your little theatre's musical, and opening night of a two-week run is tonight. What do you do? (There is no understudy, as they died in a trolley-related incident)

Simon Williams and Diana Prince. Luke Cage and Kara Zor-L. Except I think that was done or at least referenced. So I'd have to go with (con't)

Gail Simone@gailsimone.bsky.social · 4d ago

I got to fulfill a lifelong dream and do a DC/Marvel crossover story, even if it was super-short, Punisher and Power Girl, and it made me very, very happy. My question to you is: you have just 5 pages to tell the story of a DC and a Marvel character meeting for the first time. Who do you pick?

2026 Aurora Award Winners BEST NOVEL: The Downloaded 2: Ghosts in the Machine, Robert J. Sawyer BEST YA NOVEL: Breath of the Dragon, Shannon Lee & Fonda Lee BEST NOVELETTE/NOVELLA: The River Has Roots, Amal El-Mohtar (con't) www.csffa.ca/aurora-archi...

I think if the Aurora presenters just tried a bit harder, we could get the award ceremony up from a lean 60 to 90 minutes to a solid five or six hours.

Ok folks, Sheila and her family need our help. You might know her as the editor of Asimov’s, but she's also a good friend and one of the best people in the field. If you can, please... www.gofundme.com/f/help-irene...

Donate to Help Irene's Parents Get Skilled Nursing Care, organized by Irene Bruce

Hi - This is Irene and Juliet, the daughters of Sheila and David. As many of… Irene Bruce needs your support for Help Irene's Parents Get Skilled Nursing Care

gofundme.com

It's an odd coincidence that the common feature in the various Dragonbane real play videos I've seen seems to be players discovering during their first combat how death saves work for player characters. (con't)