sean guynes
@guynes.bsky.social
critic and cultural historian of genre fantasies / senior acquiring editor @leverpress.bsky.social / associate editor of sf @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social / read more: seanguynes.com
Hot damn, that looks great!
Dr Stephanie Farnsworth-Meek@mutanttheorist.bsky.social · 17h agoYou can now pre-order my monograph Rewatching Daria in Sick, Sad Times: The Politics and Prescience of the Animated MTV Sitcom (and it's a great excuse to watch the show again!) mcfarlandbooks.com/product/rewa...
It's giving "if Kelvin from Righteous Gemstones were straight"
Christian Nightmares@christiannightmare.bsky.social · 18h agoYouth pastor 2026 edition…
No one has more contempt and disdain for the people who work in higher education than the people who work at the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Chronicle of Higher Education@chronicle.com · 2d agoOpinion: If AI is now part of academic writing, what should institutions actually evaluate? This essay argues that analytical writing should be judged by evidence, structure, argument, and accountability not by guesses about how each sentence was produced. https://chroni.cl/4eDRdjg
Thanks to @silentlondon.bsky.social for this wonderful preview of the book by @lizclarke100.bsky.social and I edited. Pre-orders started last week. @rutgersupress.bsky.social silentlondon.co.uk/2026/10/15/p...
Pre-order now: The Silent Film Companion
I have been wanting to share this news for a long time. I am delighted to tell you that The Silent Film Companion: A Recovered and Expanded History is now available to pre-order from Rutgers Univer…
silentlondon.co.uk
A library you had to pay significant amounts of money to physically access (hardware) plus a subscription fee to remain a member (internet costs). So I guess it was more of an elite co-op library? Not their point at all, but worth remembering the Internet has always been pay to play.
Aaron HM@aaronhm.bsky.social · 3d ago“The internet is a store but it used to be a library” hits me like a slug to the chest
Well up at the sight of C3P0? Want to hug Johnny 5? Me too! Chapter 11 of Screen Captures explores what it's like to love (platonically) the machine. Free to read on Open Access. #FilmSky #BookSky www.fulcrum.org/epubs/ft848v...
I’m sorry to have to be the bad guy here but we need to recognize that we live in a compressed air thrusters world now. If you’re not finding ways to teach the critical use of compressed air thrusters in your classroom, you’re setting your students up to fail when you could be setting them up to fly
Yahoo Finance@yahoofinance.com · 5d agoTesla stock pops after unveiling Roadster with compressed air thrusters for limited flight
The Ballantine Adult Fantasy reading series is one of the toughest things I do as a critic. With few exceptions, many of the titles (so far!) have been pretty dull stuff! It's always worth it once I've written my piece, but it's so often a slog. My current antagonist is George MacDonald's LILITH.
A colleague recently asked about teaching a Swann novel, and I heartily recommend WOLFWINTER (1972) as the best of his novels. It's a great starting place and I think would teach really well. Sadly, it's been out of print for more than 50 years!
sean guynes@guynes.bsky.social · last wk.Today would be the 98th birthday of Thomas Burnett Swann, one of the most important but undersung fantasy writers of the 1970s. His quiet, queer reworkings of ancient and medieval myths are simply astounding. In just a few short years he published 16 novels but died of cancer at 48.
I *love* Sanjulian's art! Like Rowena, Sanjulian is one of the few in the Frazetta tradition whose work actually becomes something more than imitation and titillation, rendering beautiful, lush, vivid colorscapes of fantasy and horror. A full list of his sf covers here:
Summary Bibliography: Sanjulian
isfdb.org
70s Sci-Fi Art@70sscifiart.bsky.social · 6d agoRIP Manuel Sanjulián (June 24, 1941 - October 14, 2026) www.rtve.es/noticias/202...
Aaron Swartz, coding prodigy and hacktivist who helped develop RSS and was a co-founder of Reddit, died by suicide after facing $1 million in fines and 35 years in prison for felony charges, just for downloading pdfs of research papers with the intention of making them accessible to the public.
Julie S. Lalonde@julieslalonde.bsky.social · 7d agoBeing GenX/Millennial is such a trip. In our lifetimes, we saw people our age getting wild criminal penalties for pirating music and now have to sit and watch as companies gobble up our work with impunity.
Great journal to review for, especially if you're trying to get your foot in the door as a younger academic looking to do book reviews.
Gerry Canavan@gerrycanavan.bsky.social · last wk.SFFTV Call for Reviewers (Fall 2026) gerrycanavan.wordpress.com/2026/10/13/s...
I wrote about @sepinwall.bsky.social 's great new book about Rod Serling and why I highly recommend it! www.moryan.com/thoughts-on-...
Thoughts on a terrific new book about TV visionary Rod Serling
I watch television for characters, relationships, emotions, and pitched battles in outer space. Okay, more than just those four things bring me pleasure, but those are some of the big ones. And not t...
moryan.com
Today would be the 98th birthday of Thomas Burnett Swann, one of the most important but undersung fantasy writers of the 1970s. His quiet, queer reworkings of ancient and medieval myths are simply astounding. In just a few short years he published 16 novels but died of cancer at 48.
The Bittersweet Temporality of Love | Los Angeles Review of Books
On the 50th anniversary of his death, it’s a perfect time to unearth the forgotten fantasies of Thomas Burnett Swann.
lareviewofbooks.org
Having Lorne Michaels be producer of SNL in 2026 is like if they had hired someone to produce it in 1975 whose main claim to fame was a hit radio comedy from 1928.
More than two dozen workers at three major publishing houses—HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette—tell WIRED that LLMs are being used for publicity, cover art, back cover copy, and emails, as some execs push junior staff to champion the tech. Read the full story: buff.ly/p0ymGmN
This year is the 35th anniversary of Timothy Zahn's HEIR TO THE EMPIRE, which touched off a wave of Star Wars novels that has never abated. So naturally I had to write about it.
Star Wars: Reading “Heir to the Empire” by Timothy Zahn (Thrawn 1)
On Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire, the first novel in his acclaimed Thrawn trilogy, which relaunched Star Wars franchise fiction after a half-decade hiatus.
seanguynes.com
I've never cared about a book subscription until now. And it's only available in the UK! wtf!
Hachette Unveils the Ultimate Dungeons & Dragons Novel Collection | Den of Geek
Hachette Partworks pulls out all the stops with its Dungeons & Dragons novels collection, bringing books back into print for an impressive collection.
denofgeek.com
Having tried to read the first book many years ago and it not sticking (look, as a teen I read The Sword of Truth (don't recommend) and you can't do both) & watching just the first season of the TV show, I think Sean's essays on The Wheel of Time is how I'll finally experience it.
sean guynes@guynes.bsky.social · 4w agoIn which I tackle Robert Jordan's THE GREAT HUNT (1990), the second in the epically long epic fantasy series Wheel of Time. We've got anxiety about identity, questions about prophecy and fate, lots of trauma and emotional vulnerability, allusions to Arthuriana, and an explosive final battle.
The combined undergraduate and graduate student populations of all Ivy League schools is about 140,000 students. The CUNY system alone is 250,000.
Larry Glickman@larryglickman.bsky.social · 4w agoElite universities mea culpas about the “loss of trust” in higher education so often fail to consider the force of the longterm propagandistic attack on universities, given extensive play in conservative media, that long preceded Trump, but which he has massively accelerated.
I could do this all day, but you get the point(s). Trust in higher ed ≠ trust in Ivy Leagues. Budgets are moral documents and if you want to examine trust in higher ed, look at how states prioritize public higher education.
Need some ideas for new books about sf, fantasy, and horror to buy for the weirdos in your life? University presses got those aplenty! And I've got the details!
sean guynes@guynes.bsky.social · 4w agoI felt a little bad about not doing my seasonal university press recommendation lists this year, so I decided to go over all the spring and fall catalogs for 2026 to create a list c. 60 books from 32 presses. Hope this is helpful to folks!
I felt a little bad about not doing my seasonal university press recommendation lists this year, so I decided to go over all the spring and fall catalogs for 2026 to create a list c. 60 books from 32 presses. Hope this is helpful to folks!
2026 University Press Recommendations
A curated list of recommended books published by university presses and academic publishers in 2026.
seanguynes.com
Agree! Venba is a really really great game, I enjoyed it very much. Part visual novel and part puzzle.
sean guynes@guynes.bsky.social · 4w agoVenba is a pretty incredible (Indian-)Canadian game!
Venba is a pretty incredible (Indian-)Canadian game!
Playing “Venba” (2023)
The 2023 narrative cooking game Venba by new studio Visai Games punches above its weight in art, sound, and soundtrack, and tells an endearing story of a Tamil family and foodways.
seanguynes.com
Boo-rad Shankar@bradshankar.bsky.social · 4w agoJennifer Hale once told me Canadians need to champion ourselves more. I wholeheartedly agree. Over the past few months, I reached out to dozens of Canadian devs to learn their favourite Canadian games. Their varied responses offer a wonderful spotlight on some of the incredible talent we have here.🍁
